steve

Queens, NY

Stan

friend

Opera records.

it has taken over his life

thousands and thousands.

ok, two apartments and one storage unit. all are packed.

well, I am a contractor and met stan when renovating his space. He had me build a wall of CD racks for his opera CD collection. this is tame compared to the vinyl. He has a wall of vinyl in the apt he lives in and has boxes of it all over and even had a special headboard shelf made above his bed to hold vinyl. He cannot have people over because there is no place for them to sit.

now, a couple of years ago he wanted me to replace the fixtures in his bathroom. I delayed because I did not know how to tell him he had to remove the boxes of records. He finally wrapped them in plastic and put them out on the fire escape for the time I needed to work in the bathroom.

He has a vault in the basement full of records. I know that when the collection gravitates out into the aisle, the neighbors complain.

I do know that he inherited part of a collection and there was a legal dispute over who got what of the 20,000 record collection and tens of thousands of dollars later the settlement was that he and the other person sit down and one took one record, the other the next record until they had gone through the entire collection. it did not sound like a settlement to me but a punishment.