A store that has been cited by the likes of Rolling Stone magazine and one of the Beastie Boys as one of the best vinyl shops in the country, Hymie’s Records in Minneapolis is closing.
The E. Lake Street bin haven — which had been open since 1988 — will host a “going out of business” sale on Saturday, and there are no plans to open it elsewhere. Owner Adam Taylor said the store was not making enough money, and he has to pay his bills.
“I’ve closed the record shop for a huge number of reasons,” Taylor said in a Facebook post. “I have plenty of new visions. However, those don’t pay bills or buy nosh. I need a job.”
Saturday’s sale, which goes from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., will include just about everything in the store, not just what’s left in the vinyl bins.
“It’s all on sale: shelving, artwork, turntables, even the jukebox,” reads a post on the store’s website, hymiesrecords.com. “Most of our inventory has already sold … records that remain are our $3 and $1 albums and our 45s. Get them for a song!”
Taylor bought the store in 2019 just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit record shops everywhere and became a major financial hurdle. He was the fourth owner of Hymie’s going back to its namesake founder, Jim “Hymie” Peterson, whose family sold the shop after his death in 2000.
In 2010, the store’s owners at the time, Dave and Laura Hoenack, moved the shop five blocks east from its original Lake Street warehouse location to a storefront at 3820 E. Lake St. That was the same year Rolling Stone included Hymie’s alongside the Electric Fetus on its list of “The 25 Best Record Stores in the U.S.,” one of several times the store made national tallies of that sort.
In a 2006 interview with the Star Tribune, the Beastie Boys’ Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz also singled out Hymie’s as one of his all-time favorite record stores, along with another shuttered Minneapolis vinyl haven, Let It Be Records.
