#record-stores

#record-stores

It's easy to think of music as ephemeral and essentially free, rather than a thing you can dotingly select, acquire, and present to your nearest and dearest. Yet music is a courageous and intimate gift. For decades, lovers-would-be; actual-have deployed painstakingly compiled mixtapes to communicate emotions that felt impossible to express otherwise. Music is a useful, even sacred way to commune with another consciousness.

On the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 170 th Street in New York City's Jamaica, Queens neighbourhood lies a record store with a humble, retro blue and yellow frontage. " VP Records: Miles Ahead in Reggae," it reads. Named after its founders Vincent "Randy" Chin and Patricia "Miss Pat" Chin, the store was first opened by the pair in the Jamaica area in 1979 after they relocated from their home country of Jamaica.