CRAZY PEOPLE IN RECORD STORES post #3388776...
downtown72
125 Posts
this little jem is particularly aimed at you shop owners and folks who have worked in record shops and witnessed the many "unique" individuals who can come in at any moment...so i have been a shop owner for just over 3 months now - neighborhood is pretty decent, mostly middle class with a little yuppie downtown nearby. my shop is actually in an old auto center with some creepy shack/apartments in back, and occasionally there's the local meth heads doing bike rides by the shop 5 times a day. so it goes. but today, i think i truly met a crazy person. dude comes in, 40/50ish sorta reminding me of a cross between paul lynde and rodney benggenheimer (translation: flamboyant (dyed burgendy hair) but sheepishly name dropper-esque). "my brother's a genius! makes 200 thousand a year! my dady keeps it tho"anyways he's asking me if I have Johnnie Love (?) "Jail songs! kinda slezezy!" and the Rocky Horror Picture show pic disc "I paid I dunno, $30 bucks for it? left it at the hotel, yeah, boy i got burned there, again..." and then asks "how long you think you'll be here?""umm today?" i reply. "till 7""how long you hope to be here?""uh, 'til i make my first million" "ok, here" - and he puts a $100 on the counter."keep it 'til you find that record. you can send it to my PO box. y'know, a POO box, do you have one of those?"creepy. then he sees a magazine with Cat Power on the cover."ooh i dont like her, she's ugly" - flips the magazine over. "i dont like girls"hmmn. ok."i served 19 missions in vietnam - you wanna go fight? how old are you? 34? well i'm 50. is there a draft? no? well then we aint going""do you know how much a u-boat costs? y'know, like in das boot? 100 million dollars in 1925! you know what that would be today? a polish u-boat costs like 70 trillion dollars! what would you do with 70 trillion dollars?""probably buy a house," as i'm still wondering where the hidden camera is - or if he's gonna bite me."what, you wouldnt buy one for your backyard? put it in the pool? no? oh."then he walks out the door and i'm like hey man, you left this! (i couldnt take this tripper's money, but he insists!)"no no, just keep it 'til you find the records, but i'll still pay you for 'em anyway. now shake my hand. go on shake it - hard as you can!"i'm thinking uh, (not doing anything) this dude might just break it..."ok, ok. (lets go). by the way, you ever see that game DOOM? well you know the monsters? they have kids too y'know, they're real. and when we all die, they're gonna die too"and leaves. 
Comments
once worked in the Wherehouse in hollywood (long gone). not too many crazies, but tons of shoplifters. I remember when the Nuthin but a g thing single came out, tough looking dudes were just raping the cassingle wall, putten em in their coat pockets and walking back out to their cars. I was not going to risk my life for $4.00 an hour so i just pretended i didnt see em.
edit - just remembered the most significant crazy guy. He had a 8x10 of earth wind and fire and his endlessly obsessively repeated story was that he was an ex-member (i forget which one) (hed point to the picture but none of them looked much like him) and that he was trying to find the band because they had left him behind or something. He came in like 3 or 4 days in a row and would tell his story to anyone who would listen. I tried to be nice and all, and i led him to the EWF cassettes and he proceeded to drop tons of EWF knowledge about each album he held, like personal stories of recording the album etc, so much that i started to believe his story! I think he left one time and never came back.
I'm sayin' - I had to deal with countless whackos like that during
my years of record store work, but never got $100 for my troubles ...
consider yourself lucky!
Some lady came up to me, totally drunk, and tried to buy a brand new (still sealed, retail $15.98) Damien Marley Jamrock cd with a Used $4.99 sticker on it. I tell her "I can't sell this to you." She says "why?" and I tell her "someone, I'm not saying you did it, switched the price tag. This is a brand new cd and it costs...(I scanned the barcode) $15.98." She said "what? why would someone do that?" This exchange continues on for a few minutes and she eventually says "well can I get another one?" and I say "sure go ahead." She then says "will you watch my purse, I'm going to leave my stuff here." She had her purse on the counter with her wallet out and laying open on the counter. I said "no, I'm not going to be responsible for that" and she got this totally surprised look on her face and said "well, you're a little bitch aren't you!?" Then her friend next to her said to the other cashier "she should slap him. They should give her a discount."
If that part wasn't funny enough, a manager walks up after the little bitch comment and decides to help her so I don't have to talk to her. He's a huge muscley ex-marine. He rings her up and then carries the cd down to the end of the counter. He has a USMC shirt on and she says something like "that's a nice shirt, is that printed on there" and proceeds to grab his large muscley titty and squeezes it totally non-chalantly.
a collection that was only one record. I don't remember what the
record was, but that's not the important part anyway. Dude has the ORG
of said record, but he doesn't have the ORG innersleeve.
No problem, people are always trying to track down innersleeves,
inserts, lyric sheet etc., right?
Wrong, he is looking for a plain paper one!
He would go to all the shops in New York, in an attempt to find it.
When asked to describe it he'd say something to the effect of
"I can't tell you what it looks like but I'll know when I see it."
He go to shop after shop and check all the innersleeves...
Most places banned him.
I wonder if he ever found it?
seriously. that dude has probably killed people.
"Did I forget anything? My cellphone? My head? HEMMORHOIDS???"
and walks out.
1- Back in the mid 90's. There use to be this women that would come into the shop a couple of times a week. She looked kinda hippish in her mid 30's. Every time she would come in, she always did the same thing. Walked around the store slowly looking at records on the wall, never saying a word to anyone and after about 20 minutes, she would just leave. For around 3-4 years she did this. Then, one Sunday she walks in. Does her usual deal and starts walking around. I remember there was house music blasting and when she finally made it to the DJ table, she pulls down her top and starts going buckwild dancing to the music. Well, dude that was playing the music didn't know what to do so I just walked to the back and turned off the music. She pulls her top back up and just casually walks out of the store like nothing ever happened. That was the last time I ever saw her.
2- Another Sunday I was working. A friend of mine came to work to hang out and we hit up a breakfast spot before opening up the store. After we finish, I open up the store and we walk in. As soon as we do the phone rings. There is a dude on the phone who starts saying all this crazy stuff. Some pretty nasty shit. Anyways, I hang up the phone and dude calls back. This time he says something about wanting the guy in the yellow jacket (Which was what my friend was wearing). OH SHIT... I thought. Dude has been watching us. I hang up the phone and my friend thinks I'm bullshitting him. When dude calls back, my friend answers and after 30 seconds hangs up the phone. When I was on the phone, I noticed the music in the background was just like the classical music they played across the street. So I told my friend if he calls back, give me the sign and I'll run across the street and see who's near any phones. Right then, the phone rings and my friend gives me the sign. I run out the shop and run over and start looking around. Nothing.... So I go back to the store and my friend tells me that as soon as I ran out the door, dude hung up. He never called back. Not a crazy person story. But still crazy...
3- I know I told story awileeeeee back. So, I won't say it again. But when I was a kid, I saw my uncle get stabbed over a Diana Ross album. That fool must have been crazy. Ain't no early 80's Dianna Ross album worth stabbin' a dude ovah!
here are a few of my favorite crazies:
1) the silver fox - older black gentleman who looked like red foxx, and called himself the silver fox. his response to a lot of questions was: "for the bootay". why did you do it fox? i did it "for the bootay!"
2) space girl - the real girl from the sonic youth dirty boots video, who didn't make it in hollywood, but turned to a massive amount of drugs, and well, got spacey. she even carried a copy of the video in her chevette to prove she was the girl. she would come in talking about sex, smelling of really bad BO, asking you if you wanted to get high (but never had any weed), and claimed she dated HR from Bad Brains, who she said locked her in a closet. she even had a lion of judah ring that she said he gave her.
3) lester aka "hot coals" - a veteran of the now defunct marlboro mental institution, lester (who resembled john lee hooker and spoke like him), would break into fits of slapping himself, as if he were putting out hot coals on his skin. particularly troubling if you were trying to make a sale and he got into a hot coals fit. when we first move dinto our space, lester took a dook in our doorway because he was pissed we took his hiding spot away.
4) nacho and ramon - nacho claimed to be a referee from mexico, but now he lived in new jersey as a full time drunk. he didn't speak much english, and had the worst teeth i've ever seen live, but he was a funny guy. he sang in spanish, and always asked for "sesenta centavos, por favor." his amigo was ramon, a puerto rican guy who was his nacho's right hand man. they were drinking buddies, all day and all night. he was crazy as hell, doing any kind of trick to get money for the fifth of gin, which they would drink straight. according to the liquor store next to us, they would sometimes buy 24 of them a day.
5) pissy pat - not sur eif she was male or female, we named her "pat". she would always have a huge piss stain on her pants, and would look at you and whisper stuff, wave her hands around like a wizard, and then rummage through our garbage.
6) Last but certainly not least, was "P-Funk" . P Funk was this crazy black guy that walked by the store one night while i was playing funkadelic. from that night on, he called me funk, and he was P-Funk. He'd come in high as hell, dance, and ask for 5 dollars, EVERY time. i'd have to duck him, because he'd be like: "yo funk, come on man, funk, it's P-Funk, let me hold 5 dollars. come on funk, i need it. it's P-Funk, come on baby "(all ike turnerish, i'm waiting to get hit by a friggin shoe). that cat was crazy.
good times.
This guy has been coming to our store (Apple Specialist) for a while, who legally changed his name to James T Kirk, who makes all sorts of lofty claims like he designed the F-16, toured with the Who, helped design the first Mac, etc... Pretty funny stuff... Not really touchin some of the other stories here tho...
Peace
DJ Zest
keep em coming.
Fatback: was the sodomizer a Richmond person?
really. he'd fit right in. But the doom monsters children bit is fucking mindblowing.
I was the only other person in the store, and I hadn???t realized there was someone actually occupying the bathroom. About 15 minutes later, a pudgy guy came out of the bathroom looking like he had just taken a shower ??? fully wet from what would turn out to be sweat. I looked at dude, back at the clerk, and then went back to the bins, because I didn???t want to know what was really with this cat.
He flipped through one new arrival bin, and pulled a pile of records, seemingly at random, then headed up to the counter. There was a guarded exchange between he and the clerk about the bathroom, but essentially they guy claimed he just gets really hot sometimes. He sweats a lot. It was not hot in the store or outside.
Sweatmonster starts to explain that he doesn???t have his wallet, but he is waiting for his wife, and she will pay for his pile of records, and he wanders around the stores for a bit. 5 minutes later his wife walks in, makes a bee line for him, and the icy look she gave him was priceless??? ???did you find some RECORDS, honey???? She ushered him out of the store on the quick, and when the clerk asked if he???d be alright, she responded dripping in sarcasm, oh???. He???ll be fine. At least, until I get him home. He just gets ???sweaty??? sometimes. With that she exited. I made my purchase with the clerk wordlessly. He seemed to want to say something, but as he handed me my receipt he paused, and then just shook his head and said ???yeah???. (sigh).???
Shopping for records is always an adventure.
Currently my fave is 60 something year old dude with terrible eyesight. He''l pick up an LP, hold it 2-3 inches from his nose and read out loud every song, artist, producer's name while making goofy comments. He'll do this at random with just about any genre of music but god forbid you talk to him, you'll have a best friend for life. Have seen him sitting on the floor at the local Thrift Store just having a pretty loud conversation with no one for over an hour.
Used to have two dudes that came to the Record Shows together. Nice enough guys and they didn't really do anything weird or unusual but one of them was about 7:6 and 500 lbs while his buddy was a Dwarf.....just looked pretty bizarre together.
Legendary but now deceased characters included dealer Leonard Lowe who was pretty hip to psych stuff early on in the game but supposedly died homeless under a bridge and used to take the buss with a brown paper bag filled with records and set up at the Austin Show back in the day......heard he slept under the 6th St. bridge when the show was over. RIP
Buddy Green - Old school collector, ex-biker 400+lbs of shirtless, overall wearing wildness who displayed his 400+ tattoos, including at least 7 "Fred Flintstone" tats!! One collector was at his home the night Buddy's wife chased Buddy out of the house, through a window using a frying pan. RIP
Him: Are you American?
Me: Um, what?
Him: Are you from this country?
Me: No.
Him: Where are you from?
Me: Puerto Rico
Him: Well GO BACK.
and then he storms out.