 |
(Photo: Kenneth Chen) |
On a typical Sunday at Footlight Records, you’ll see hipsters snatching up Italian lounge CDs, hip-hop artists trolling for new beats among the vinyl movie soundtracks, seniors browsing through the Broadway cast recordings, a Liza impersonator scoring Cabaret on DVD. Since the 27-year-old East Village landmark fills niches that the chains ignore, its sales haven’t been hurt much by Tower or Virgin—the latter even refers customers here for imports. Best known for its rich cache of male and female vocalists, Footlight (113 East 12th Street; 212-533-1572; footlight1@aol.com) is also one of the few stores that carry certain works by Ur-monologuist Ruth Draper and the Akira Kurosawa soundtrack-CD boxed sets, and it’s the exclusive source for Dame Edna CDs. Owner Ron Saja started collecting the recordings of his favorite film composer, Bernard Herrmann, at 12; he bought Footlight in 1993 after working there for six years. Ironically, Saja prefers dramas to musicals, but he goes to the theater constantly and loves Avenue Q. (If only Princeton, Q’s mix-tape-constructing puppet, had access to Footlight—he might have moved beyond the Billy Joel basics.)
Email
Print
The Transformation of TV Into an Art Form
The Draw of Dream Worlds in Film
Gosselin, Prince of the Professional Nobodies
A Decade of Defining Moments in Pop-Culture
The Invention of New York's Local Cuisine 
Thirty-Five Short-Lived Looks of the Decade
Two Views of a Swath of the Upper West Side
An Older Generation Moves Into Williamsburg
Ten Years That Changed Everything
A Generation of Overparenting
The Sports Rivalry of the Decade
What Is the Point of the United States Senate? 
