Unique Finds At Philly's Only Black-Owned Record Shop

Bob's at Sook Vinyl and Vintage in Mount Airy. That's my neck of the woods. Hey, Bob. Yeah, you got it, Bill. Come on, just send me your charge card. We're going to go shopping since this is your hood here. Souk, which means an outdoor market in northern Africa. And that's exactly what we have here. But taking it outdoors, indoors. Vinyl records, bobbleheads. One man's junk is another man's treasure. We're going shopping with Bill's credit card when we come right back. Germantown Avenue, Mount Airy, a vintage record shop. Take a look at this, the old jet from 1957. Yeah. Good morning, everybody. You know what? What's old is new again. We all know vinyl records are coming back. You need the turntables to play them on. Take a look at this. Vintage Jackson 5. We're right here along Germantown Avenue. You're going to love this place. Going to come in. We're going to scroll through, put the needle on the record when we come right back. You know that Philadelphia's only black owned record shop has expanded, allowing space for events and community programs. And Bob is there at Sook Vinyl and Vintage right there. In Mount Airy. Hey, Bob. Yeah, good morning, everybody. We're right here along Germantown Avenue. My buddy, Rashid, a brand new spot. You actually tucked away off on the side street here. How y'all doing? Good morning. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Tell me about Vinyl. It's coming back. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been back. So we were on Mount Airy Avenue for about... The past two, three years, and we just expanded into this space. Same address. We're on the Germantown storefront now. We can do events here. We got a lot more space, as we'll show y'all. We're going to go for a tour. What's great is everybody's got to stop at this traffic light, which is going to give you a great eye appeal, right? Yeah, we're right at the intersection of Germantown and Mount Airy, 7169 Germantown Avenue. And besides the vinyl, well, first of all, you have a lot of stuff on display. Tell me about this album right here you mentioned. Oh, this is an original Blue Note pressing of Sonny Clark, Leapin' and Lopin'. That's actually the second one that we found this year. It's pretty valuable, so we don't want to have that one in the bins. We put it on the wall, but the album is actually in there, and it is available. And what's great is that you invite people to come on in because there's so much. You don't know what's in each of these bins. I've been walking through. I just picked out some stuff over here. You know, again. I think nowadays, even with my son Austin, they want to hold it. They want something, right, to play. To put it on a turntable. We got J-Lo. Come on, some DeBarge. I remember wearing some of them outfits back in the day, right? Madonna. Stevie Wonder, the Isley Brothers. This is cool, but you've got to look. You've got to look through it, right? Yeah, we have things in genre, bins. There's even bargain bins where people can go through the dollar bins and stuff like that. Let's go down this line, George, because look, if you have a record, you need a record player to play it, right? The old 1200 techniques are here. Well, absolutely. We sell hi-fi equipment. We have some turntables on display. If you look over there, we have some more hi-fi equipment, I've made some... Some old cassette decks. Yeah, cassette decks. Oh, hold on. I want to show you this right here. So take a look at this. Remember back in the day, the Jet. Yeah, Jet Magazine. Jet Magazine. So these are actually the ones that people are more familiar with, at least people my age. The larger ones that kind of look like a TV guide. Right, and these are particularly rare. 1957. Yeah, I call these the Pantone covers, and these are the early era Jets. Um, and... And these are collectible. Somebody that's watching, you know, if you're looking for this stuff to kind of fill in your collection, he's got a whole table. Oh, where's the cassettes over here? Look at this. I remember having this. Come on, we got the cassette tapes, right? And we even have the cassette players to play it. So come on in, bring yourself some time to take a look through. And you got a whole store. You got to move over here because this space is for your events. Buy, sell, trade vinyl, books, magazines, anything pertaining to vintage black culture, anything that's open you can listen to in the store. We have listening stations. Here, hold on, Mike, for a second. Watch. Hold that for a moment. Look at this. Look. I'm going to. I'm going to pretend I'm George the Photographer. Yeah, sir. Okay. Remember this one? Old school camcorders, cameras, boom boxes, all that. Boom box. I'm going to get a boom box and a camcorder. We'll be back. Stay there. George! I had an uncle that had one of those permanently attached to his hand. He went to every single event. I didn't even know he had a face or eyes. It was just the camcorder back in the day. So much of that, that type of equipment, because again, I bought my parents' house and they lived there forever. My dad was a radio guy. So I've been remaking and I'm not, but people have been fixing the old stereo equipment like this. Cool stuff.