F**k and Run
Dispatch from the middle of the hurricane
I had an idea last week that I’d anticipate my current time crunch by finishing up a short story I’ve been tinkering with, something evergreen I could drop into the Monday slot while I worked through a few busy days and then turned in a piece about my travels later on. That didn’t happen, and now I’m in the weird liminal hours between tasks, so instead I’ll tell you a messy story of what I’ve done so far.
I drove out to Broadview Heights, south of Cleveland, for a record show today. It was fairly close to the location of the last one I did, but run by a different outfit, and last year it was apparently the crown jewel of their Ohio shows, packing hundreds of people into the gymnasium of an event center to shop for records before they went on their St. Patrick’s Day binges.
Of course, last year it was also 33 degrees and snowing. Today it was 75 and sunny, with the promise of more spring storms already on their way from the plains, and according to the show runner, we were down close to 150 people in attendance. It started dead, got a little busy for an hour or two, and then straggled to a finish with a couple late big spenders turning the day from an outright disaster to merely awful.
There was a snafu with the tables, too, so another dealer and I basically had to fit one more table into a space than could actually fit. Ever the accommodator, I tried to set up an L-shaped plan with my records physically separated from my CDs, down a little blind alley that apparently made them invisible to a good percentage of the browsers. I actually had a grip of really nice titles, the kind of stuff show people always ask for – OG Dark Side of the Moon, original Rumours, a couple Rolling Stones, a passel of Blue Oyster Cult in great shape – and none of it sold.
What I did shovel out the door was mass quantities of bargain bin CDs. One fellow dealer who owns a shop near Akron, who bought a duffel bag full of my cheap discs in Youngstown, was back for more, and actually brought over a restaurant dish tub to carry his 112 (the quantity, not the third-tier 90s R&B group) CDs back over to his area. Another lady bought ten for $20, made the rounds, and came back for more, whispering “don’t tell anyone I said this but these other guys ain’t got shit, you got the best stuff.”
One thing about this outfit, their music playlist is absolutely on point. Lots of 80s and 90s deep cuts, obscure memory-holed singles (who remembered Jimmie’s Chicken Shack was a thing?) and tunes you don’t expect from the usual “play a bunch of Zeppelin and AC/DC” record show aux cord holders.
(I had a gleeful moment watching an aisle full of middle-aged male record nerds mouthing the words to Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run,” only to all independently stop in unison at the “even when I was seventeen/even when I was twelve” line, like Michael Bolton in Office Space singing along to gangsta rap until he sees actual Black people.)
I wasn’t in a bad mood by the end, especially with a few last minute sales to salvage the day, but I was tired even by my own end-of-show standards. The runner offered me a free table for next show to make up for the setup fiasco, and I resolved to get here earlier next time since these guys seem to adhere to more of a dog-eat-dog seating plan as opposed to an actual mapped out chart. I hit the road for home, debating whether to stop at Lee’s Famous Recipe in Sandusky for their coveted chicken on the way.
I wound up taking that dinner break, not so much for the food, but because I was already exhausted keeping the van on the road. The clashing weather systems that gave us 70-degree Sunday and a 50-degree temperature drop by morning were creating gale-force winds, and my lumbering Town and Country minivan was all over the road. I loaded up on honey-dipped battered strips and the best coleslaw in the business, then limped my tired ass back to the warehouse.
After some true silent-movie-era slapstick chasing one of my box lids across half the industrial complex parking lot in the wind, I got everything squared away and made it home. It would have made more sense to lay down immediately, catch a couple hours’ nap and get back up at 9, but I wound up sitting on the couch in a stupor for too long first, then passing out, and now it’s 2am and here we are.
That’s only really a problem because I’m leaving at 8:30 to go pick up the first load of my next buy, the 6400 CDs in Michigan. Out of respect for the laws of physics and my aging shocks and struts, I’m doing two trips, Monday and Tuesday, and I haven’t even started making room in the garage for them yet. I’ll get home with load one (after a stop at Mike’s Famous Ham Place for lunch), rearrange the garage, unload the van, pack the weekend’s mail, then catch up the books and inventory from Sunday.
So by… let’s say Tuesday night… the dust will have settled, I’ll have the show boxes restocked, there’ll be 6400 CDs in my garage (in addition to most of the 1000+ I bought last week) and I’ll be ready to really hunker down and… go on vacation?
We have traveled to Alabama every spring break for the last 20+ years to see my family, and the tradition really snuck up on us this year. As of this writing we’re not even 100% sure when we’re leaving, or what we’re doing on the drive down, but we’re working on it. I’ll probably still update from the road, but I might take one or two PTO days during the trip. I know I’m gonna see my nephews, have a good time, hit a few diners, and hopefully see some old friends.
The funniest part? We get back the following Friday, and the next record show is that Sunday. So I pretty much have to have the boxes restocked and ready to roll this week, in addition to getting the new stuff onboard and getting prepped for traveling. Luckily, I’ve done a ton of work front-loading this process and I have lots of inventory ready to refill those cheap boxes quickly, so it shouldn’t be that bad. I might even have time to finish that short story!
Hopefully the storm squalling outside my window right now burns itself out by morning, as predicted, and hopefully I sleep through the next five hours of it. Lucky the Cat is already snoring next to me as I type (aided by the extra breakfast she and Luna scammed out of my wife this morning two hours after I fed them and left town).
April will be the real test to get through four more record shows and see how fast I can process and blow out this many CDs, but for right now the battle is just to stay caught up and get everything locked down on the premises. This is what I asked for last year when we ramped up the business, and I’m not ungrateful, but maybe one more hour of sleep between cataclysmic major events or unhinged weather systems would really be the parsley on my soufflé right now.