Does coolness need a business plan? Benny Coy has just drawn a blank when I ask him about the—sorry for the totally unhip phrasing here—"target clientele" for the High End Mystery Emporium, a new record store and culture spot he and some friends are opening Downtown.
"It's not about business," he says at last. "We're making a record store that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world."
By "record" he means "vinyl" and by "store" he appears to mean "why wouldn't people come to a place as groovy as this?" Of course, given vinyl's tiny share of the audio marketplace, you'd think a business plan might've been even more useful, but Coy and partners Christian Rogers and Chris Ecklund are clearly operating from a different model. Rogers' answer to the target clientele question? "Pretty much everyone," he says a few days later.
After all, it's not like records are the only draw. "It'll be eclectic," Coy says, leading me into a small chamber that'll house a DJ booth. "A little bit of everything that's good." So in addition to the records—don't look for CDs, by the way, except for those from local bands and DJs—there will be art, particularly glass art, some clothing, a book exchange, custom furniture—whatever seems right.
And the place does have an excess of cool going for it; a '60s-era house on Casino Center, its vividly colored windows and dark, grotto-like architecture are instantly winning. "We love the area," Coy says. "The area around UNLV is getting too ... Starbucksy."
It's a week before the store's official debut—the doors will be open for First Friday but most of the merch won't be for sale until Tuesday—as Coy leads me through the still-under-construction space. Albums are stacked everywhere. (Rogers figures they'll have 2,000-3,000 records in the store, with many more available in his and Coy's garages.) Coy points out where listening stations will be, where the indoor stage is planned, the area where they'll sell vintage turntables.
"Look," says Joel Spencer, a furniture artist, holding up a small TV console with a mirror where the screen should be, "I'm on TV! Mirror TV!"
"How wonderfully ... impractical," Coy says approvingly. Spencer continues hauling in the whimsical furniture that he'll sell at the Emporium.
"We've been wanting to do this for two years," says Rogers, who, with Ecklund, a glass artist, operates the store. He and Ecklund are old friends, while he and Coy are members of the Bargain DJ Collective. So the idea of merging their record collections and cultural enthusiasms into a Downtown oasis had instant appeal.
"We're crossing a lot of genres," Rogers says. "People coming here will get a chance to see a lot of things they wouldn't get to see in a regular record store. We want this to be a spot everyone wants to go to."
A few days after my tour, The New York Times Magazine will come out with an article exploring how more young entrepreneurs are converting their lifestyles into businesses. I didn't see the High End Mystery Emporium mentioned in the piece, but these guys are working from the same impulse. "Its comfortable," Coy says. "It's like a place where you can come home, hang out, spin some records." We'll see if that's business plan enough.
The High End Mystery Emporium is located at 1310 Casino Center, a few doors south of the Funkhouse. For First Friday, the Emporium's operators plan to have The Nines playing on the roof.