A car roared down 103rd Street in Chicago in the middle of the night on New Year’s Day, jumped the curb and slammed into a neighborhood record store. By morning, the front corner of the shop was gone. Nearly a year later, the doors are open again, and the whole neighborhood showed up to celebrate.

The store is Beverly Phono-Mart, a beloved record shop on Chicago’s Far Southwest Side. It just held a grand reopening on a Saturday at 1802 W. 103rd St., with music playing and drinks from Marz Community Brewing.

A Crash At 2:30 A.M. Took Out The Corner Of The Store

Chicago police said the driver lost control while speeding and crashed into the building near 103rd and Wood streets around 2:30 a.m. on January 1. The driver was alone, and no one inside the store was hurt.

Co-owner Mallory McClaire learned about it around 8 a.m. from the property manager. “The entire corner of our storefront is gone,” she said at the time, though she added that most of the merchandise survived. Neighbors pitched in to help clean up and board up the shop.

Regulars Kept Ordering Even With The Doors Closed

Here is where the story turns. The store stayed shut for nearly a year, but its customers did not drift away. Regulars kept ordering online and placing special orders, and the shop delivered those records right to their homes.

That kind of loyalty is hard to buy. A closed storefront can sink a small business, yet this one kept its cash register ringing through a website and a delivery run.

A Smaller Storefront Became A Pop-Up Shop

The store also operated for several months as a pop-up in a smaller storefront. It kept customers browsing in person while repairs dragged on.

By April, the shop was throwing a Record Store Day party at its temporary location. It offered 15% off used records and 20% off brand merchandise, with DJs spinning all day and more than 100 special and limited-edition vinyl releases on the racks. McClaire called the day “our favorite day of the year.”

“We’re Thankful To Have A Community That Comes Out And Celebrates”

At the reopening, McClaire gave the credit to the neighborhood. “We’re thankful to have a community that comes out and celebrates and supports small business,” she said.

The celebration was a thank-you to the people who carried the store through the long closure. Music filled the room and local beer flowed, which is just about the right way to bring a record shop back to life.

From Online-Only Seller To Neighborhood Hangout

Beverly Phono-Mart started as an online-only retailer and opened its brick-and-mortar location in 2021. McClaire and her husband, Chantala Kommanivanh, are both Beverly residents.

The couple got the idea during the pandemic. They often drove to record stores in other towns and found many of them closed, which convinced them that music lovers at home needed a shop of their own. The name is a play on “beats per minute.”

The store became a hangout for people of all ages, with brick walls, colorful artwork, comfortable couches and global snacks on the shelves. Hip-hop and R&B are its best sellers, with pop and rock close behind.

Kommanivanh knows music from the inside. He grew up on pop and hip-hop and produced music for the rap group Maintenance Crew from 2004 to 2013. McClaire grew up surrounded by her father’s love of soul and jazz.

When the shop first opened its doors, it said it was thrilled to finally welcome the South Side vinyl community. The crash also damaged the neighboring art gallery and twisted a wrought iron bench on the sidewalk, so the reopening felt like a win for the whole block.

The store’s website still sells records to customers anywhere in the country, with free shipping on U.S. orders of $75 or more.

How To Help Your Own Neighborhood Record Store Survive A Setback

The shop’s story has a lesson for anyone who loves a local business. A small store can outlast a disaster when its customers decide to stand behind it. Here are a few ways to do your part for the shops in your town.

• Order from them directly. When a store has a website, a special order through it keeps more money in the neighborhood than a big online retailer does.
• Keep ordering during a closure. Those orders paid the bills at Beverly Phono-Mart while the front of the building was being rebuilt.
• Show up for the events. Record Store Day and grand reopenings bring in the crowds that small shops count on.
• Bring a friend. A record store is a place to talk music, and every new face is a future regular.
• Ask about used records. Used bins are often where the best bargains are, and the store gets a fair price for crates that might otherwise end up in a landfill.

For Beverly Phono-Mart, the long wait is over. The doors are open, the turntables are spinning and the regulars who kept the place alive can finally walk in and flip through the bins again.

If you grew up shopping for records, there is something comforting about that sound. A neighborhood store that was hit on the first day of the year has made it to the end of the year on its feet, thanks to the people who kept coming back.

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