
Brooklyn Record Exchange
Photo: Courtesy of Mexican Summer
Indie Label Mexican Summer Launches Brooklyn Record Exchange Vinyl Expansion
Brooklyn, New York's Bushwick area is getting an expanded new record store as proprietors set to soft-launch Brooklyn Record Exchange on March 28, with a full opening this Saturday, on March 30. The space is expanded from the much-loved Co-Op 87 with the help of nearby Greenpoint indie label, Mexican Summer Records, home to artists including Best Coast, Kurt Vile, Ariel Pink, Jessica Pratt, and Weyes Blood.
More than just an expanded Co-Op 87, the Brooklyn Record Exchange fulfills the hopes that started the shop as well as bringing together other local creative forces. Mike Hunchback and Ben Steidel began Co-Op 87 and Keith Abrahamsson and Andrés Santo Domingo founded Mexican Summer Records. All four men are behind the BRE launch.
The new storefront vinyl shop shares a compound with major local music landmark called Elsewhere, a reconfigured industrial space hosts multiple venues, unexpected niches, and reconditioned office space. It also attracts a great deal of young-adult foot traffic and is part of the greater Bushwick Collective effort to enrich the local scene.
"The biggest benefit is just being able to design it from the ground up," said Seidel. With rack after rack of vinyl titles to choose from, the expansion matches demand and should add to Bushwick's cultural capital as a hip locale.