“No, I refuse.”
Addy balked at first, then expressed his appreciation, and charged the customer $80. The man shook his head sadly as he pulled out a credit card. “I wish you were here forever,” he said.
But Addy wasn’t mourning. Wearing a cowboy hat and a red button-up shirt embroidered with musical notes and trimmed in white fringe, he stayed jovial as he rang up a seemingly endless stream of customers clutching stacks of vinyl, books, CDs, old magazines, band posters, and random junk, sharing stories of old rock shows and favorite LPs purchased at his store.
He rattled off his purchases—a haul of Foucault and poetry, plus the new Chvrches LP. “Where else can you pay under $100 for this kind of shit?”
After the set, Addy returned to the register. The credit card machine went down—overwhelmed, he later surmised, by all the day’s purchases. Friends walked in carrying food, champagne, and a cake. Saturday was also Addy’s 64th birthday.
