Featured Essay: The Day After Record Store Day: A Profile of a Record Store Owner

by Mark Dempsey

Downtown Summit, New Jersey is a little less musical these days. Scotti’s Records, one of the longest-tenured businesses on Springfield Ave, has closed after 68 years of business. My mother bought her first records at Scotti’s. I bought my first CDs at Scotti’s. It’s an institution, and its closure has been bittersweet. “I feel like I went out on my own terms. It wasn’t a bankruptcy situation. I wasn’t desolate.” says owner Gary Scotti. “I sold every vinyl record that I wanted to sell.”

For those not in the know, Summit is a commuter suburb on the intersection of two NJ Transit lines. As New York City has rebounded over the past fifty years, wealth has poured into town, but there’s still some family-owned local landmarks that have been staples of the community since the 50’s (the local Summit Diner is one of a few remaining 1930s prefab diners in the state – I recommend the sausage). Scotti’s Records was founded here in 1956, and at its peak in the 1990s, was a chain of five stores. “I started closing them one at a time as leases were coming up and I could get out of leases because [the record store] business seemed to deteriorate pretty quickly at the end of the CD [era]”

The building that Scotti’s called home also housed a Ski & Snowboard store and three apartments above. “It does need some renovations. It’s pretty obvious if you walk around to look at it, but the bones of it are great.” The store leased the building from Gary’s father, Anthony. When he died, the building was transferred to 351 Springfield Ave LLC, which then sold the building to 353 Springfield Redev LLC in 2023. Scotti’s lease expired in late 2024. “I knew that they were not planning on doing anything and I asked if I could stay through Christmas, through the end of February, and they agreed to that graciously,” said Gary. “When I went back to talk to them to reassess, we mutually agreed that it was beneficial just to part ways.” 

To relocate Scotti’s Records was out of the question. The logistics involved were prohibitive, not to mention skyrocketing New Jersey rent. Instead, Gary and his team announced over social media that they would close in a few weeks. “The community reaction was just overwhelming. Positively. To this day. I’m floored by the reaction of people and how much it meant to everybody. I had tears in my eyes when people came to talk to me.” All sorts of people came into the store to make their final purchases, including his old employees. “One day like 10 or 15 of them all came in, had presents for me and we had a whole reunion there.” I personally went into Scotti’s the day after the announcement, and there was a line out the building of people browsing and catching up. The vibe in the store was nostalgic and celebratory. I left with two overflowing brown paper bags, one full of CDs, and the other full of vinyl. 

Gary remembers one group of people in particular. “I had a list of customers that were good to me over the years, just individuals that would come in and buy CDs… They didn’t have a lot of money and they were good good customers for a long time so I was taking their names and phone numbers and towards the end I called 10 or 15 of them and said look, I’m done selling. I got a lot of great CDs left. Come on in, I wanna give you some. I gave them boxes and just had them pick stuff out. They were such good people that they were like ‘Well is this too many to take?’ I said ‘Look, I gave you the box to fill up, just fill it up. Don’t worry about the price. Take ‘em!’ I didn’t know what I was gonna do with them! CDs, they’re hard to get rid of, we sold a lot of them but we had  thousands of them left over and there was a lot of good stuff so I was able to give away two or three thousand CDs that way.”

Gary, now 65, is adjusting to life outside of brick & mortar retail. “The first couple of weeks, I had my garage filled with stuff, the computers, the racks, and I have a lot of stuff that I’m slowly working through, so [now] I’m just relaxed. My daughter is pregnant. She’s having her first child… I’m catching up on things I never used to be able to do, but it hasn’t been that long.” But he hasn’t left the record business entirely. He still sells records from home on Discogs. 

https://www.discogs.com/user/scottisrecordshop

Mark Dempsey writes reviews of used CDs on his blog, Double Binary. He plays bass in Final Resting Pose and guitar in Goalie Fight, among other bands. He lives in New Jersey

The full transcript of this interview can be found here.