Status: 02/19/2021 2:53 p.m.
Hamburg record stores don’t have it easy right now. The industry doesn’t want to complain, says Danny Marques Marcalo. He visited two traditional shops and noticed: the discs keep turning.
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Listen to the post
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Panels wherever you look. It is likely up to 300,000. But they don’t really know, say Christopher Zielske and Sebastian Prinz from der Plate groove in the Grindelviertel, one of about three dozen record stores in Hamburg. Here you can buy well-preserved discs from all genres and times.
Selling in the Hamburg record shop – only online
Currently only online: “You just sit in your office all day and become a desk clerk. We really didn’t want that,” says Christopher Zielske. Everyday life is a bit sad. “You try to do it a little nicely by putting on a record to get a little bit of the feel for the record store.” He got to know his own shop anew, says Zielske. Sometimes he rummages in his own assortment, for example in the “Italian things from the 80s. For example Kodo, 83, that was such an Italian artist.”
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In the past, concerts were played in the shop window of Michelle Records in Hamburg.
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All well and good, say the two, but actually the record groove should be full of life. It has been around for 40 years in 2021. But it feels more like a hangover than a party. A few kilometers further on at Lattenplatz in St. Pauli, Jakob Groothoff knows this sober new reality in his own Hanseplattewhere there is only music from Hamburg. “On Saturdays there is usually a flea market all around the store. You arrive here, make music, you may still be a bit dizzy from the day before. You talk nonsense and sell a lot. That’s the record store life.” Now, however, everything is so sensible that it is about creating an invoice. “This is of course a badly managed world,” said Groothoff.
Hanseplatte sends goods in a kind of pizza box
He puts a platter in a cardboard box that looks like a pizza box. He has a pile of pizza boxes that are then shipped to customers. He doesn’t want to sue in business. Many order out of solidarity. What is missing is the feeling, the tension in the air, when customers are excitedly looking for new fabric in the store. His colleague Sina Kelting is honest. “I’m a bit bored – because we just pack and don’t have any more customers in the store.”
Same situation in the plate groove on the leg. Customers only exist virtually. But so many that at least the annual business at the end of 2020 was okay. Actually, there should be people here, events take place, the music brings people together. Sebastian Prinz is hopeful for the time after Corona. “After the first lockdown, we expected that it would start again very slowly. The opposite was the case. Within a week or two they stormed our booth. I expect it will happen this time too, and so do we can continue to operate the store. ” Until then it will continue in the Plattenrille and in the Hanseplatte, even if everything is strangely sterile at the moment.
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