One of the most striking aspects about Dublin’s Twisted Pepper, the venue which announced its closure this week, was just how much went on in the building.
Aside from gigs, club nights and events, the space also housed, at various times, a cafe, bookshop, recording studio, barbershop, clothes store and a record shop. In terms of return on investment per square foot, that’s pretty impressive.
But the returns were not just financial. All of these enterprises ensured a great community of people were coming and going all the time. The Twisted Pepper was where people who were doing stuff in the city hung out because of the amount of activity in the building.
It was telling that it was where Gib Cassidy found lodgings for his Elastic Witch record shop. As with the Plugd store moving into the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, it made sense for record stores, at a time when they’re not the be-all and end-all any more of how people find and purchase music, to seek shelter with like-minded souls to cut costs and benefit from foot traffic.
Yet there are still some brave souls who will go it alone. Neil Watters is opening Classified Records today in Dundalk, the town’s first store to sell records in 15 years. His belief is that the local record store is not dead and that there is a market for an independent store selling vinyl reissues, new releases and second-hand CDs and DVDs.
Watters’ aim is for a shop which is specialist, but not elitist. “People will feel welcome when they come into the store,” he says, “and can feel free to ask for whatever records they want, no matter how weird or abstract. We carry a huge back-catalogue, impossible to stock, but easy to order in upon request.”
