American Smellscapes: Days of Vinyl

Via Vintagesacramento.com

Spokane photographer and videographer Young Kwak was on assignment for The Pacific Northwest Inlander when the scent memories caught up with him:

I opened the door, walked in and it hit me, the scent of plastic wrap, laminated cardboard and heavily treaded carpet. I forgot how inviting the smell was, as a place of comfort when I was a teenager and even later in life.

It was while photographing The Long Ear, in Coeur d’Alene, for this week’s Inlander, when the smell of the record store triggered memories. While most of the store is row after row of CDs, it has retained its record store smell.

Record stores don’t hold much olfactory resonance for me, even though I spent a lot of time as a kid “cruising Tower Records,” namely the original store in Sacramento (picture above, in 1968) and later the one in San Francisco at Bay and Columbus.

Which reminds me, I’ve still got a couple of cartons of LPs up in the attic at FirstNerve Manor. [You no longer own a turntable.—Ed.] [Yeah, but that Steppenwolf album could be worth a lot on eBay.]