I stumbled upon an old post on my pal EV Grieve’s great site from 2012 that aggregated some great shots taken on Avenue A in 1997 by a reader of his named Dave Buchwald, and came across a photo of a place I’d completely forgotten about, and felt compelled to share it here.
Ostensibly, 1997 doesn’t *sound* that long ago, to me, but when you do the math, it’s actually a long goddamn time ago. In 1997, my kids had not been born yet, I was not married and I had not even met the woman I was going to marry, yet. I was living on East 12th Street, working two overnight shifts a week at the TIME Magazine News Desk. I was still young, fleetingly solvent, single and indeed ready to mingle. On my days and nights off, I was likely found darkening the doors of many an establishment on Avenue A and its surrounding environs, many of which pictured on that post (including the noxious Korova Bar, which I re-invoked not too long back). It was a different age.
Accidental CD’s was a tiny little hole in the wall just to the north of St. Marks on the westerly side of the expanse of Avenue A. If I’m being honest, it was not a regular stop of mine. I mean, sure, I was routinely to be found rummaging around in any number of the once-numerous record and disc shops downtown, but true to its name, Accidental CD’s never seemed especially concerned with presentation. Titles (used and otherwise) were simply put in boxes haphazzardly and put out front for your perusal. If you came across something you were actually looking for, it was something of a miraculous accident – hence the name, I guess.
But beging the fastidious and exacting music consumer I was (and remain), I usually wanted a bit more attention to care and detail, so rarely stopped by to examine Accidental’s wares, such as they were. If they couldn't be bothered to do some rudimentary organization of their stock, I thought, why should I bother spending my money there?
Around 1996 or so, I became consumed with finding a copy of a live album by Husker Du called The Living End, mostly because of its feral airing of “Divide and Conquer” and a blistering cover of the Ramones’ “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” While the disc had only been released a couple of years prior, it had become something of a strangely elusive item. I honestly can’t remember if Amazon was selling music, at this point, but that wouldn’t have been one of my usual channels anyway. Finding nothing amidst the, again, still-plentiful network of downtown disc shops, I reparied to the still burgeoning eBay to see if the disc could be had there.
Sure enough, in no time at all, I found a seller, placed my bid and won the disc for a relatively modest sum. Upon completion of the auction, the seller reached out over email, noting that we were both in the same neighborhood, and suggested I just come and pick up my disc instead of getting the post office involved. I said fine, and mindlessly trotted out my front door to go fetch my copy of The Living End, a stroll that led me directly to the address of …. Accidental CD’s. Turns out they were quite aware, thank you very much, of what they had in stock. I started to give them way more consideration and business after that.
Today, the space that had been Accidental CD’s in a entirely shun-worthy 99-cent pizza joint.
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