[78-L] 140,000 Records to St. Vinnie's

[David London]

Seattle music-shop owner donates 140,000 records to St. Vincent de
Paul Society of Seattle/King County
By Mark Rahner

Seattle Times staff reporter

It's possible that, say, Creed and Hanson and Starship will
inadvertently wind up helping people.

Their albums may be among the 140,000 records that the owner of
Ballard's Bop Street Records donated this week to St. Vincent de Paul
Society of Seattle/King County, the sale of which will help the needy.

"We're ecstatic, because this is obviously a huge amount of records,"
said St. Vincent de Paul spokesman Richard Bray.

St. Vincent de Paul will sell them "and with the proceeds we provide
help for people facing eviction, people facing hunger, people facing
utility shut-off — all of which have experienced greater needs in
the past two years," he said.

Digitally, that much music would fit on a few dozen 32g iPods. But it
took a 53-foot trailer to move the vinyl on Thursday. A couple more
smaller trucks were parked in front of Bop Street on Friday as owner
Dave Voorhees flipped through iPhone photos of his new shop:
12-foot-high shelves with library-style ladders.

He's moving from 5219 Ballard Ave. N.W. to 2220 N.W. Market St., just
a few blocks away — and from 9,500 square feet to 3,500.

So he had to get rid of about a third of his inventory and he likes
St. Vincent de Paul, simple as that.

A natural pack rat, Voorhees said he has collected records since 1958.
As of Friday, the shop still had piles of old laser discs, all manner
of obsolete stereo equipment in the cavernous basement and a
collection of LPs on the wall that suggested a penchant for '50s and
'60s lounge music. He had come down with the mumps as a kid and
listened to the radio while he stayed home in bed. His wife is a
former customer.

Bop Street had been in its current location since 2001 and in Ballard
since 1984, Voorhees said. He's moving because the building was sold
and will become a bike shop.

And as cool as he finds the new location and the increased foot
traffic on Market, he's not tickled at the thought of a new owner
painting over the signatures of the hundreds of artists who have
played in the shop — he points to the scrawls of Radiohead, Nico
Case, a member of The Pogues — as well as a big mural on the back
wall with his own face among assorted music legends.

As for Voorhees' massive donation, Bray said, St. Vincent de Paul has
never received one quite like it. The staff is inventorying the boxes
of LPs, 45s and 78s for a big record sale sometime in July.

"We know we have every genre under the sun in there," he said
(including, according to Voorhees, a couple of boxes of Lawrence
Welk). "We think there's going to be something for everyone."


On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:04 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > From: "David Lennick" <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> > > Hope the foundation I'm trying to SELL my collection to doesn't get any
> > > ideas from this.
> > > http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2012210996&zsection_id=2003904401&slug=records26m&date=20100625
> > >
> > Whatever this was SUPPOSED to link to doesn't seem to work...can you copy
> > the text
> > and post that as a message?!
> >
> > Steven C. Barr
> >
>
> Link works just fine here..unfortunately, I can no longer copy anything and get plain text. New computer "improved" things out of existence. This is why I don't forward Vince Giordano's itineraries anymore (sorry, Vince). Any copy I forward from the article probably won't show up.
>
>
>
> dl
>
>
>
>
>
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