Been meaning to put up another big, sweeping round-up of vanished NYC record and disc shops (more photo-driven, this time), but just haven't had the time. To whet your appetite for that, however, enjoy this fleeting shot (prized from an ancient issue of SPIN) of Freebeing on Second Avenue, just south of St. Marks Place (now a shawarma stand, if memory serves).
The one memory I have of this incarnation of Freebeing (before it moved West to a fleeting spot on Carmine Street before vanishing for good) was that it was always LOUD. My friend Rob B. and I used to refer to it as DEAFWRECKASTOW (as in the record store wherein you'd go deaf). Oh what cards we were.
During the first Gulf War, I worked at an offshoot of LIFE Magazine titled LIFE Goes to War, and worked alongside this one elderly copyeditor lady. At some point she and I were talking about downtown Manhattan, and she started bragging about how she helped get "this horrible record shop that was a front for drugs and crime" evicted and closed. That shop, it turned out, was Freebeing. I stopped talking to her shortly afterwards.
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