New Art!

In the spirit of the ever evolving Hall of Records, we've got some new pieces of art on the walls! Unfortunately, the cord to my camera is missing so I can't upload pictures just yet, but hopefully we'll find it soon. Guess you'll just have to come in to see them :)

A few weeks ago I got a call from a girl in NYC who had a photographer friend in Portland. She said he loved Hall of Records and asked that we surprise him for his birthday by hanging some of his prints in the store. It was such a nice gesture on her part that I just couldn't say no.

She had me pick out some prints from his website: http://jackson503.tumblr.com/. The two that spoke to me immediately were the spinning record with the piano reflection in the middle and the zen rocks. Now Mile's artwork is on display in the Hall.

In addition to Miles, our amazing chalkboard artist, Edgar, is creating chalk art for sale on our walls. We are asked about the chalk art constantly, so we asked if Edgar wanted to do some more. So now in addition to our large menu chalkboard he has two pieces on the walls that are also album covers.

They are 12" X 12" chalk art album covers with a glaze sprayed over them. He's going to commission a few more and they are AMAZING. We had a girl in the store the other day that reps artists and owns a gallery and she said that chalk art is one of the hardest things to do. Edgar must be pretty special. He definitely is to us.

$20 Gift Certificate with the purchase of a USB Turntable this Friday!

Giving Thanks

This Thanksgiving, Justin & I have A LOT to be thankful for. We've had an amazing year of seeing our creation come to life. We have great friends and family. We have a roof over our heads and love in our hearts.

We are especially grateful for the community that we are building at the store - which grows larger and larger every day. We have amazing employees (Reid & Nate), an amazing business partner (Dameian), amazing help and support from Mom, Bettie and our families across the country and amazing customers who are really becoming friends more than anything else. We couldn't have done it without you and are so grateful that you chose to cross the threshold of our front door and walk in to our lives.

New Winter Menu

We have devised a new winter menu to keep you warm and toasty!! Yesterday was the first day we had Chuck Roast Beef Stew and Vegetable Stew and we almost sold out!! It's so delicious!!



(Click the menu to enlarge)

And with that comes....

A new Happy Hour Menu!

Black Friday/Small Business Saturday

This Thursday we will be closed for Thanksgiving, but come Friday & Saturday we're offering some sweet deals!

10% off all Records

$20 Gift Certificate with the purchase of a USB Turntable

So that means, yes, we also have Gift Certificates! People have been asking/calling the store a lot lately to ask if we have them. And for your holiday shopping, we also have some sweet T-Shirts :)

Oh yeah, and Portland Monthly Magazine named us one of the "Best Bars to Play" in their upcoming Best of the Bars issue!

http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/eat-and-drink/articles/2010-best-bars-play-1210/

:-D

Happy Holidays!!

Ohmega Watts is back!

Tomorrow (Thursday) for a special Happy Hour Set. The last time he stopped by he was unbelievably good! Looking forward to seeing him again!

Jamaican Night with Live Horns!

We met Buddy, aka DJ Green Mango, a few weeks ago when he stumbled upon our store to find a bunch of his friends (including the DJ playing that night) hanging out inside. He said it immediately felt like home and he wanted to throw a big party there. So this Monday, he's getting together an entire horn section and hosting a Jamaican Night at the Hall. Should be a great night filled with lots of great energy! Looking forward to it!

Yummy goodness on all fronts, courtesy of our good friend Coley.

New Options!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post! I usually like to post a few times a week but things have been insanely busy! We've been making tweaks here and there to better the business - which has kept us on the go every day, combined with working at the store almost every night.

Dameian's pretty much done building the third record bin. By bringing in a new bin, we're cutting into some of the existing seating area, so we're bringing in some high top tables and stools for the middle of the room. I think it'll balance the room a lot, while also providing multiple options for seating. Some people like the small tables in the back for meetings or playing games, while others want the more bar experience of the high tops and others make a bee-line to the soft couches and chairs.

It's a balancing act to try to schedule all of these changes in unison. We can't bring in the third record bin until the new tables are ready - which are really the old table tops that we made, just on a taller base. But we need to wait on the new stools and still build a shelf for the listening stations - which should be cool because it can double as a wall bar when it gets busy.

We're also modifying the menu towards more snacks and small plates. We're keeping a lot of the sandwiches still because people love them and we've seen a hugh uptick in repeat business for the sandwiches alone. But we do want to offer more options because not everyone wants sandwiches for dinner or late night.

Our family friend, Bettie, has been a HUGE help in the food department. She's an amazing cook and everything she makes is soooo good. Every week she comes in to help make the soups (this week is Homemade Vegetable Minestrone and it's amazing!!). This week she's helped a lot with our small plate options. We've started to slowly introduce some new items - such as Cherry Tomatoes topped with Tapenade, Onion Confit Crostini and Three Cheese Garlic Bread. Soooo Good!!!

New items such as spinach dip and hummus made from scratch may be coming to the menu soon, too! We're still in the experimenting stage, but so far we've been eating like kings and can't wait to share. I can't even begin to express the gratitude I have towards aunt Bettie for helping us. She truly is a gift.

We've also started selling some record players. We're starting small, with our favorite portable record player from Numark. They are the same ones we use for our listening stations. You can USB right in to your computer and convert albums to MP3s. We had been telling everyone how much we loved them that it just made sense for us to start selling them, because we were telling people to go out and buy them anyway. We've had them in the store for three days now and have already sold two. Woo hoo!

Trends

I love seeing what our store is becoming! It's so interesting to sit back and watch something you've created evolve.

One thing we've been seeing a lot of lately is people bringing in games. They sit for hours sipping on wine or drinking beer while playing dominos, uno or cards. We even started bringing in our own personal games for people to play. I think it's just a cozy atmosphere for people to sit for a while, listen to the music and enjoy themselves.

And interestingly enough, we've seen a lot of girls in the store! I find this fascinating because records typically are more appealing to guys, but the space we've created is super cozy and appealing to girls. We now have two sections with soft seating (both a couch/lounge area and two super comfy chairs). It's so easy to get sucked in to them, drinking wine, for hours!

I love what we're becoming. I think we're going to expand the appetizer menu to accommodate the wine bar aspect that seems to be growing. We put new string lights around the windows and they look amazing. The whole space looks super inviting.

Halloween Party Pics!

Super huge thanks to everyone who came out in the rain on Saturday!! We had such a good time!










More pics over on the Facebook Page!