Philly Plain Dealer

Tucked away in the corner of E Mount Airy Ave and Germantown Ave in Philly’s Mt. Airy neighborhood sits a hub of vintage Black culture curated by Rashied Amon. Amon has been running SOOK Vintage & Vinyl for nearly a year selling vinyls made by Black artists, vintage HBCU apparel, old school magazines, and a wide variety of statues, figures, and tchotchkes of cultural significance. 

When you google the phrase “Black-owned Record Stores Philly” the three suggested stores are Repo Records, Philadelphia Record Exchange, and Digital Underground. In a phone call with the Philly Plain Dealer, all confirmed that they are not Black-owned and do not know why they’re listed. 

“Unfortunately I’m the only Black owned record shop in the city. There’s actually only two in the State, us and Forever Changes in Phoenixville,” said Amon, continuing “I take it as a big responsibility. I consider myself a purveyor of culture and, you know, it’s not something that I take lightly.”

SOOK Vinyl & Vintage is open Wednesday through Sunday, but Rashied Amon also takes a sliver of his 10,000+ record inventory on the road to trade shows such as VinylCon to keep the business going. He was able to amass his collection by buying “Black music non-discriminately for about three years, regardless of genre or artist, a master collection of about 10,000 records.” His pursuits were inspired by his Father, “I’m a son of a DJ. I came across my father’s collection 15 years after he passed. Then after that, I was inspired just to collect as much Black music as I came across, I’m just always looking for music.”

For Amon, the quick sellers are obvious “the hot names go quick, Michael Jackson, Prince, things like that. But people know or are learning, they’re starting to learn what they can find here. It’s something different.”

Records aside, you’ll recognize a strong collection of statues, decorations, and figures throughout the store which come from a pop-up Amon curated called the “Black Culture Museum.” The items he collects and sells must meet two criteria: “it has to be at least 20 years old and reflect black culture.”

Running the pop-up was imperative to building his shop “before I opened a shop, I ran a Black culture popup for two years… the first year it was apparel based with a little bit of records. Then the second year, about a third of the shop was records, a third was apparel, and the third was art. After we rolled into our storefront, right after the second popup, we just had enough momentum at that time to open up a permanent storefront. Our mission is reclaiming and redistributing.” 

As unbelievable as it may sound, SOOK is currently the only Black-owned record store in the Philly. SOOK Vinyl & Vintage is a great place to discover something new or to learn about a familiar name. Throwback Grambling State merch sits on clothing racks next to tapes of Billie Holiday, thousands of records line the walls in this multi-room mecca of Black culture.