Fred’s Records
198 Duckworth Street
St. John’s, Newfoundland
www.freds.nf.ca
Downtown St. John’s is a landscape dotted with color. Every color, in fact. Duckworth Street, a main drag just a sturdy block up from St. John’s harbour, is pretty much all two or three-story, woodlap-sided frame buildings. It’s the kind of main street that city planners dream about with thriving retail stores on the ground floor and apartments or low-foot-traffic businesses above. The buildings are painted every color of the rainbow, and a few are painted colors that nature never intended. The street is busy nearly every hour of the day and maintains a fair amount of traffic after the shops close, the pub crawlers making their way up to the restaurants for late night silly food.
In a vibrant purple building with gold lettering reading “For the Record, It’s Fred’s,” houses Fred’s Records. Not only is this place a St. John’s tradition for finding just the right music, it exudes the kind of local cool lost nearly everywhere in the States. As one who tearfully said goodbye to entire afternoons spent in Tower Records on Sunset, finding this unpretentious haven of both popular and rare CDs was heaven on earth.
Independent record stores are rare these days as they try to compete with megastores with mega-discounts and iTunes. Yet stepping inside Fred’s is like stepping into a record store of a decade ago, a place seemingly unaffected by malls, Best Buy, and download capabilities. Passing the door onto hardwood floors, shoppers are greeted by both unbelievable numbers of wood bins lining the walls and floors and a staff that knows when to let them alone and when to offer suggestions. Colorful posters for both albums released and concert past adorn the walls and even some windows. T-shirts hang in the rear corner, and vinyl albums rest under the bins for both those who love the scratch and the music that was never released on compact disc.
Just inside the front door is the standard rack of top selling albums. In this case, CDs by Great Big Sea, the Navigators, Ron Hynes, and Buddy Wasisname (all worth checking out, by the way) were joined by copies of the Gerald S. Doyle songbook from 1966, another rare item of Newfoundland tradition. In exploring the racks, all of the usual U.S. and Canadian acts are represented, though Fred’s carries maybe four copies of their CDs instead of the thirty found in the megastores, and with good reason. They have to make room in the racks for all of the great musical finds. This is the one-stop-shop that carries not only the greatest hits, but the albums cut by the bands heard in the pubs on George Street. Fred’s supports local artists, many of whom could stay in the CD player for days on end.
My maiden voyage to St. John’s was this summer and Fred’s was a lovely surprise. Though, clearly, the American woman on a solo mission scouring the racks was going to need some guidance. An employee named Steve wandered over to help. I already had a handful of music and two copies of the Gerald S. Doyle songbook when he reached me. He asked what I was looking for and my response was a basic, “Pretty much anything. What do you have?”
He introduced me to a couple of things on the listening station, told me about some national Canadian acts I was missing, and guided me to the Navigators CD I was looking for in the local section. We talked about blues, the States, and a little about St. John’s, but mostly about the new music I was about to be ripping to my hard drive in very short order. Then, he let me wander for awhile longer, ask random questions, and then changed the music on the store stereo to an artist he thought I should hear.
My final selections made, I set the stack of CDs on the counter, assuring myself that the conversion rate would be kind to me and I wasn’t actually spending as much as I thought I was. As he was ringing up the CDs, Steve held up several selections and his notes of “excellent choice” and “you’re smart to grab these Doyle books, that’s all we have,” actually meant something. Fred’s has a staff that knows quality and tries to steer customers in the right direction. It’s a kind of customer service that’s mostly lost these days.
Next time you’re in the market for CDs, especially by Canadian artists, check out Fred’s. You don’t have to go to St. John’s. They’re on-line and ship everywhere, and I bet if you called them and told them what you’re looking for, they’d have three more suggestions of things you’ll like. The Amazon.com or .ca databases assume that customers will like certain items by what they’ve purchased, but it occasionally steers customers very wrong. At Fred’s, a human gauges customers’ reactions to items and knows the product backward and forward.
In defiance of the download and discount store trend, Fred’s Records is a tradition. Check them out and let Steve know what you’re thinking - he won’t steer you wrong.
The Owl Bar at The Belvedere
1 East Chase Street
Baltimore, MD
http://www.trufflescatering.com/owlbar/index.html
Baltimore is an undeniably tough town. While the architecture and the locals are both quite inviting, it’s one of those cities that exudes a need for caution. Ignorance of the local turf can leave a visitor instantly on the wrong block and not entirely sure which direction will be safest for a quick exit.
When I was doing my graduate work, a small group of us, eager representatives of Upstate New York, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas, would head into the city to explore on free afternoons. Blissfully unaware of the areas we were exploring and figuring there was safety in numbers, we’d park the car and walk literally for hours.
One such afternoon during the second summer, while exploring the Mount Vernon neighborhood, we wandered north up the hill and came across The Hotel Belvedere. A reasonably imposing structure in what’s more of a two-to-three-story neighborhood, the architecture was quite grand. Given that it was a hotel, there was a good chance there were publicly accessible restrooms in the lobby and we wouldn’t have to purchase anything to use them. So we headed inside.
Sure enough, to the right of the door, we found the washrooms. Meanwhile, a couple of our cohorts wandered off, then wandered back and informed us that we were undoubtedly stopping for a drink. They had discovered “The Owl Bar.”
The entrance to the bar is flanked with photos - presidents, first ladies, politicians of all sorts really, actresses, sports heroes, diplomats, heads of state, artists, inventors…you name it. They all drank here. After studying the portraits for longer than we should have, we looked a little deeper. The bar had opened in 1903 and on this hundreth anniversary of such a revered spot, we had to know more.
Entering The Owl Bar seems a bit of a maze. Dark corners and heavy velvet curtains give it a Speakeasy feel, and with good reason. Once inside, we were greeted with the sights we love - brick floor and brick walls, stained glass, and the kind of long oak bar that Hollywood can only dream of recreating. For being haunted by the ghosts of diplomats and presidents past, it’s surprisingly low-key. The most ostentatious things in the whole place are the cloth napkins. The room has an odd orange glow both from the fire for the brick oven pizzas and the orange and green stained glass above the bar.
There are dull bronze owls with blinking orange eyes high on the wall above the bar next to the stained glass panels that read collectively:
“The wise old owl sat on an oak,
the more he saw, the less he spoke,
the less he spoke, the more he heard.”
Turns out, in the 1920s, this was a Speakeasy. During Prohibition, it was one of the few places in Baltimore that shipments of liquor from Canada and Mexico were distributed. If the owls’ eyes were blinking, the shipment was in and all was well to party and ask to purchase the contraband. If the owls’ eyes were glowing solidly, it was time to be silent until the feds were gone.
As the owls’ eyes were blinking upon our entrance, we settled into a table in the blissful air conditioning, remarkably having the bar to ourselves. Texas ordered a “Tanqueray and Tonic in a tall tumbler with a tangy twist”, her version of a gin and tonic with lemon, though we needed an abundance of Advil after that alliteration. As the bartender was quite exceptional in his duties, our afternoon’s exploration ended right there at The Owl Bar, and it became sort of a staple of our outings and remains that way for reunions.
Beyond having truly great bar food and a talented barkeep, it’s the history of the place that keeps us coming back. None of us really care about where we have dinner before meeting there for drinks- it’s all about The Owl Bar for us. In the evenings, there’s always a robust crowd from the neighborhood. The crowd is generally ages 30 - 45, and politics dominates nearly every overheard conversation. The place is lousy with both lawyers and military, as one would expect so close to DC, but this is their neighborhood pub and a brick layer would be equally as comfortable as a diplomat.
The Owl Bar is a place of conversation. There is only one television, usually tuned to some sport or other, and the sound is always off - not that anyone could hear it anyway. This is a place of connection - between people, and between the past and the present. Set in an old hotel that’s been rehabbed into condos, The Owl Bar remains defiantly Baltimore.
If all politics are local, then they’re some of the very few things left in the country that are. It has become increasingly obvious to even the most casual observer that our cities are suffering from a glut of overly branded national chains. Small businesses and even some local traditions have been forced to the sidelines to make way for overbuilt national chain stores that politicians feel will help their downtown revitalization projects.
There’s no doubt that bland shopping centers with the same combination book/DVD/music stores, restaurants that mistake portion size for quality, and utopias of housewares are tax generators. City councils love them, and clearly they’re well-patronized. Yet they lack a certain inspiration - the hometown excitement of a business person that knows his market and has the freedom to take a risk outside the cookie-cutter corporate model.
The term “defiantly local” is being used regularly these days. It’s used, albeit sparingly, to describe the truly unique spots, the visionary ideas that work beautifully just in one place, that inspire their patrons with a sense of local pride and a place to try something new and different.
So, with the loss of some of these local cultural icons and the Vegas-izing of things like CBGBs, defiantlylocal.com will highlight those places around the country that are embraced by their local populations as the one place that defines a neighborhood or even a city. Check back regularly for new updates and feel free to submit ideas. Welcome!