A1 Records
A1 is the room every DJ in the city has bent over at 4pm on a Wednesday.
New York has more record stores per square mile than almost anywhere on earth, and a depth on dance, jazz and hip-hop that no city can match. A1 is the gateway drug.
Why A1
A1 has anchored the East Village dig since 1996. The room is small, the bins are tight, the price stickers are honest, and the rotation is constant. It is a DJ shop in the truest sense — house, disco, Brazilian, soul, jazz, hip-hop, all in walking-distance proximity.
What to dig for
12-inches you actually want to play out. Strong on disco edits, Latin breaks, Detroit and NYC dance pressings, and the kind of jazz that crossed over to the dancefloor.
After A1
Stay in Manhattan: Academy Records (West and East), Generation Records, Rebel Rebel ghosts. Cross to Brooklyn for Captured Tracks (Greenpoint), Human Head (Williamsburg), The Thing (Greenpoint) — the chaos dig of last resort.
Also worth your afternoon
- · Academy Records
- · Captured Tracks
- · Human Head Records
- · The Thing
Full map of every record store, listening bar and fair in New York on the Vinyl Atlas map.
MORE TOP SHOPS
- → Tokyo: Disk Union Shinjuku
- → Berlin: Hard Wax
- → Melbourne: Northside Records
- → Los Angeles: Mount Analog
- → Portland: Little Axe Records
- → Austin: Waterloo Records
- → São Paulo: Tracks Discos
- → Paris: Superfly Records
- → Lisbon: Carbono
- → Barcelona: Discos Paradiso
- → Milan: Serendeepity
- → London: Phonica Records