On a day much like the one that inspired this post, Saturday found myself, my wife and the kids out here in Quogue, but cooped up inside on account of the relentless wind and rain. Repairing to the basement playroom with little Charlotte & Oliver to pass the time, I started to once again forage through my old things as my kids rummaged through boxes of toys. A little over a decade ago, I took advantage of both my Mom's generosity and relatively large basement out here and carted in a bunch of flight-cases filled with my record collection. Unable and/or unwilling to part with my prized vinyl well after the dawning of the digital era, my records are now divided up between Mom's basement and a storage facility on Varrick Street in Manhattan. Will they ever see the light of day -- let alone grace a functioning turntable -- ever again? It remains to be seen.
In addition to my vinyl, however, I also stored three or four milk crates filled with cassettes; mostly promos, ancient mix tapes and conventional store-bought ones I'd accumulated over the years. If vinyl is a dead medium, the cassette is virtually extinct. As Charlotte and Oliver discovered a cache of crayons and proceeded to scribble maniacally over sheets of paper, I carefully sifted through my old cassettes and spread them out across the floor. I hadn't seen some of these in years. Timeless classics rubbed shoulders with forgotten favorites (and some dubious selections). There isn't a working tape deck anywhere in this house either, so ultimately they're not much good to me, but I'll be damned if I'm going to part with them. Immediately after I took this picture, Oliver started building a castle out of them.
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