Turning a Grilled Cheese Connoisseur’s Loss Into a Win for Techno
Only after five minutes into our discussion with Shawn Schwartz—owner-operator of the longstanding, infamous Brooklyn-based techno record store Halcyon—does it dawn on us that this man is more than just a modern-day conduit for the current rise of techno’s popularity in Brooklyn; he is the grail, the amulet, the being. He may, in fact, be techno personified: He owns one of the oldest techno-based record stores in the Tri-Cities area, the aforementioned Halcyon; he co-created Output, the most influential club of recent memory in America; and he started one of the city’s most forward-thinking record labels out there, Scissor & Thread.
At the core of his being is Halcyon, which opened in 1999 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Opening shop at a time when Brooklyn was far from what it is now, it was the area hangout spot for those into 140 BPM—not because of its artisanal cocktail menu, but because it was literally the only place in the neighborhood where you could hear DJs spin during the day. Part café, part venue, part record store, it originally started out as a place for his friends to, as Shawn puts it, “smoke weed and drink coffee while listening to awesome records.”
Moving to Brooklyn in the ‘90s was hardly the romanticized vision we now entertain, and the scarcity of cool things to do worked to Shawn’s advantage. The shop’s cheap rent and distance from the record stores of the Lower East Side allowed for Halcyon to thrive. “People would do the circuit on Tuesday and then come hang out at our spot on the weekend. They would find a bunch of stuff that they missed or that sold out at the other spots. It was a good time for us.”
Running a record store back then was far from what it is today. Every Sunday night, Shawn would head out with his buyers to a large warehouse in the city and hand-select next week’s releases. But what was once the easiest and most fun part of the job has become the hardest. Shawn says that what now keeps him up at night is getting his hands on the inventory he needs in a timely and economically efficient manner.
Like much of Brooklyn, the rising cost of existing in Lena Dunham’s world has forced the store to pick up shop and move on multiple occasions. Now in its fourth iteration, it looks to revamp an unused storefront next to Output in Williamsburg. With a carefully curated selection of vinyl and a Funktion-One sound system, Halcyon looks to be the place for record release shows and chill-out sets in Brooklyn. And with brick oven pizza, craft cocktails and coffee, it shapes up to be a nice alternative to an all-weekend warehouse-infused bender.
The store gives off a modern, hip vibe one would expect from a shop in Williamsburg. Nestled on an unassuming corner attached to Output, it is definitely a place one would have to be looking for to find. We have gone to Output countless times and never even knew this space existed. It was originally built out by the club as a 24/7 grilled cheese dinner concept, but it never actualized. And at a time when the idea of another artisanal food establishment in Brooklyn makes us want to vomit, a grilled cheese connoisseur’s loss is our gain, as this area was sorely missing a solid record shop where DJs and fans alike could congregate and shop.
We caught up with Halcyon founder Shawn Schwartz to explore the difficulties of owning a record store, a label, and a club in 2016—plus his love for kitsch furniture. Make the jump to read our interview; it’s a refreshingly positive look at the future of electronic dance music.
The underground techno scene is notoriously rigid, inclusive, and standoffish, but Shawn Schwartz is none of those things. Eschewing the all-black, oversized garment look—which, for better or worse, epitomizes techno in 2016—for more of a thrift-store look, Shawn was happy to discuss everything from owning a record store to the current state of electronic music.
A Chat With Halcyon Founder and New York Nightlife Luminary Shawn Schwartz
1999. Carroll Gardens. How did you get there?
I got there largely by accident. The original Halcyon was sort of an extension of my lifestyle. I had moved out to Brooklyn a few years before it opened—at a time when Brooklyn was neither hip nor really on the map for anybody in the city that was into underground culture.
I am a born New Yorker; I have lived here all my life. When I moved out to Brooklyn, my friends threw me a going away party like I was moving to Siberia. For my money, I got a much bigger apartment than anybody I knew at that time had. I eventually convinced my friends to come out to see how great the neighborhood was. They would come over and DJ on Saturday afternoons, just to hang out and play records, smoke some weed, drink some coffee. They would bring their friends, and it evolved over time to something that was too big for my apartment, as the neighbors started complaining and shit.
So, I started looking for a spot to do this event, thinking I would just host it at a bar. I would go into places, and I would be all, “Look, you are a bar that does not do that much business on a Saturday afternoon; let me bring 40 people in here. We will bring in turntables and a DJ.” They did not get it. It was the mid-’90s, and the idea of DJs existing outside of a nightclub was really not something that people understood. This was a long time before you would walk into a department store and have a DJ playing.
They did not see it as viable, so I was like, “Screw it, I will open my own place.” Rents were cheap around the neighborhood, and most of the storefronts were either empty or had people living in them. I got this spot and more or less set it up to be my apartment. We had a record store in the back, put a sound system in, put a coffee bar in. When we opened, we had no idea what the reaction was going to be. People like immediately got it or didn’t. People either walked by, looked in, and were like, “Wow, this looks fascinating and totally for me.” Or they walked right by and were all, “I don’t get it,” and were intimidated by it.
Tell us about what it was like opening a record store in the late ‘90s?
It was a great time, because it was pre-digital and everybody was buying records. It was the golden era of having a record store. At the time that I opened in ‘99, there were a good dozen solid record stores in lower Manhattan that were catering to each little genre. You had Breakbeat Science and Liquid Sky covering drum & bass. You had Temple doing more techno, and you had Eightball and Heart Beat and DanceMania doing tribal stuff. You had Dance Tracks and Sonic Groove doing techno. You could do a record store crawl. We were the outlier; we were the only one in Brooklyn. But we did really well with that because we were also this event/hangout kind of space.
People would, on Tuesday, hit all the shops because that was the day that all records used to come out. People would do the circuit on Tuesday and then come hang out at our spot on the weekend. They would find a bunch of stuff that they missed or that sold out at the other spots.
The business aspect of owning a record store is incredibly intriguing. How was buying records from the distributor different from now?
Completely different. At that time, every major city had a handful of shops that specialized in DJ 12-inches. There were these big distributors that were mostly located in New York. You had Watts and Nemesis and Syntax. These places were huge warehouses with hundreds of thousands of records inside of them. It was more akin to manufacturing than the boutique style we see today. I would go with my buying team every Sunday night. We would pull the records right out of the crates, put together a big stack, and listen to them. We would buy cartons and cartons of records every week and turn them over without a problem. They were consolidators; they were import exporters.
Halcyon, itself, is a distributer of records now. How did that come about?
Distribution now is such a different picture than what it was then. We’re typical of what distributors are like now, in that our operation is relatively small. We have about 15 labels that we take care of. Most of them are just friends, and current and former employees that started their own labels. It is very boutique, but in a way, that is very typical of most distributors today. Nowadays, you don’t have these behemoths that buy all these different genres; everybody has their own little corner that they are handling, and nobody is really that big.
Tell us about the evolution of the store.
We were in Carroll Gardens for five years before moving on to our location in Dumbo, which was more of a record store and less of a venue of sorts. We did not have a bar, and we did not have any food. It was somewhat of a BYOB, underground space. The focus was on retail. It was on odd time for DJ 12-inches, because iTunes was just starting to take over. [Richie] Hawtin was working on Final Scratch with Stanton; however, they were having problems with bad latency issues, and no one ever believed that it was going to replace the record. Serato solved the latency issue, and immediately the floor fell out. When Traktor came along, everything was done. We were there for 11 years until moving to our pop-up next to TBA. And now we are here.
Give us some crazy stories about the Carroll Gardens Years.
There were so many. Our programming was really, really dense because we were open seven days a week, and we would put on two to three events a night. So many big DJs would come through and play a set for us before playing their main gig in the city. It was a different time then. It is such a competitive market now. When a DJ comes through town to play a party somewhere, they are not allowed to do anything. They can’t do an after-party, they can’t do promotional appearances; that promoter has them on complete lockdown. It wasn’t competitive like that—everybody was into trying to spread the love and spread the message. So, DJs would come to town and play clubs wherever and then rock a little in-store set for us on the regular. We had a lot of big-name guys come through.
When could you really see the paradigm shift in the industry, and more importantly, the rave scene in New York?
It was still on the up and up when we started. There was starting to be some signs of trouble and some pushback from the Giuliani administration, but it didn’t really crash and burn until 9/11. That was like the nail in the coffin. Prior to that, there were definitely issues with the cabaret licensing and trying to shut places down.
Moving from place to place and setting up a location, only to have to move, has to be infuriating and hard on your psyche. How has this constant change defined you and your shop?
I am actually not a nostalgic person. When something is done, I am ready to move on and do more. Stagnation is not that creatively inspiring. So, for me personally as a business owner, some of my favorite experiences, the parts of the process that I have cherished the most, have been the development phase: finding a space and imagining how to use it; actually building, designing, developing a concept. In a way, that’s a more intensely creative period than actually operating the business.
Let us talk about your current location on Wythe. What was that space being used for before opening?
The space was originally built out by Output to be a restaurant. We had this concept of it being a diner with this really cool grilled cheese menu. It got built and then got back-burnered and not operated. The room kind of just languished there without really having a strong purpose or program to it. So, when we left Dumbo and started reconfiguring what we wanted to do with the business and how we wanted to relaunch it, it became really apparent that these two things dovetailed. That room needed a purpose and Halcyon needed a home, and it just kind of clicked.
The name “Halcyon”: Are we talking about the bird or the state of being?
You did your research. The bird gives the meaning to the state of being; the bird is the mythology. It kind of all happened by accident, as we could not agree on a name and decided at the eleventh hour. We liked the sound of it. Nobody really knew what the etymology of the word was, so I looked it up. I wanted to make sure it didn’t mean “shit stabber” in fucking Swahili or something. The name just kind of fit everything we wanted: the idea of tranquility and prosperity. It had a little bit of a hint of nostalgia for things old, which kind of worked with the antiques and furnishings at the original location. It’s a different spelling, but [it’s also] the name of a sleeping pill that was the reason the first president Bush vomited on the premier of Japan. I always wanted to get a T-shirt made that said, “Halcyon: We make George Bush puke.”
What is the plan for the new location? Will you be throwing low-key events? Happy hours? Record release shows? Will it be open when the club is?
All of the above. The idea is to go back to a little bit of the programming model of the original, which was to have a day-into-night operation so that we could do different types of programming different times of the week. A place that has no cover. So, you could have big DJs doing promotional appearances and small DJs getting a foothold.
What is the trickiest part of running a record store in 2016?
The trickiest part is trying to get your hands on the inventory that you need. It is so much work, as there is not a one-stop shop for us to grab our inventory from anymore. You are competing with a website like Juno, which functions the way that the old distributors did. It is a big organization, so they can afford to buy from everywhere, every week, and get everything on release date. Because our buying is so fractured, we have to buy directly from labels or boutique distributors. We’re buying from so many different sources—it is really impossible logistically and budget-wise to buy all the new releases right on their release date. So, you lose a lot of sales to the websites, because the consumers know it is a rare commodity now. Everything is limited; very few labels press more than 300–500 copies, and if it is a good record and it is desirable, it is gone instantly. Competing with the online marketplace is really our biggest hurdle.
What is your favorite record that has come through in 2016?
David Bowie’s album, hands-down. It’s the best thing he had done in a long time.
What about your favorite record from back in the day that still gets the dancefloor moving?
My favorite type of music to play is disco, because that is what I grew up on. You mention ‘99; that was a time when there was a lot more disco in house music—sampled stuff, filter disco, that type of thing. I think disco just has a sound, has a feeling, has a vibe. It’s something that is pretty timeless; you can play it on almost any dancefloor.
How do you think the techno scene now compares to New York City in its heyday?
I think it’s bigger than it’s ever been. It is on an up, and it is way larger than it ever was.
Even bigger than the days of Limelight and the Tunnel?
I’ll tell you what the difference is: Even in the storied heyday in New York City—the Limelight and the Tunnel and Paradise Garage, and all of that—the scene was really the exclusive fashion, almost, of pretty marginalized cultures. It was mostly about gay, black, Latino cultures and populations in urban centers. Electronic dance music is thoroughly mainstream now. It is a nationwide pop cultural phenomenon, and I don’t think it is a moment; it is here to stay. Is it ever going to return to what it once was? No! (laughs). The genie is out of the bottle, but yeah—it is bigger than what it was.
Even with all of this talk about the bubble popping and what happened in the ‘90s, you feel this way? Even when Spinnin’ Records is not pushing out big room tracks daily?
Yes, because the kids that are raving now, I don’t see them just changing lifestyles and listening to country music. They are still going to listen to electronic dance music after the bubble bursts. They are just going to get older and more sophisticated in their choices. They are going to discover more of the history, they are going to start making and listening to new forms—hopefully ones that their generation comes up with. I don’t see them leaving the raving, clubbing, electronic music dance format to go rushing back in history to rock or band-oriented music, because it’s not part of their culture. They grew up with electronic music.
Kids these days don’t dream about their boyfriends playing guitar in a rock band; they dream about their boyfriends being a DJ, because that is what they saw on TV growing up. We’re dealing with the first generation now where this culture is native to them. I think the idea that this is a trend—and that they are suddenly going to go back to bands and rock ‘n’ roll and how things used to be—is as silly as thinking as the people who grew up to that are going to become ravers.
Tell us a bit about the record label you are a part of, Scissor & Thread.
The underpinnings of it started back in 2004 with one of my best friends, Francis Harris. He was part of a group doing parties called Matter/:Form—they were most known for boat parties they did that were featuring the big tech house guys. They were some of the first kind of boat parties for the tech house scene in New York. It really evolved over the years from there. Out of all the companies, for Scissor & Thread I am more of the actuary than the visionary. Francis—and then later, Anthony Collins—joined us, so the Frank & Tony guys are the A&R and are kind of the vision for the label.
We will end on this: What gets you up in the morning? What inspires you?
The answer I would have given for many, many years was: The music inspires me. That is kind of what you want to hear from people—that it is all about the music—but it’s not. It’s really the culture that inspires me. It’s about the idea that communities coming together around music tend to inspire good things in those communities. That is really what excites me: creating spaces for communities to gather. Music, yes, is the focal point; it’s what sort of creates the selection of people. But it’s about how music touches such a diversity of people and can inspire togetherness and collaboration and bring great things out of people.
Halcyon is open daily from noon–8pm and whenever Output is open. Stop by now and pick up one of Roberta’s famous pizzas to go along with your new record.
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