Shopping: Spoonful Records by Chris Deville

How crazy do you have to be to open a record store a decade after digital downloads started driving a stake through the heart of music retail?

"People at the bank are like, 'What are you thinking?'" said Brett Ruland, the former graphic designer who decided to expand Spoonful Records, the label he's run since 2003, into a storefront stocked with vinyl.

Spoonful opens Saturday in a Long Street space next door to B1 Bicycles. Ruland hopes the shop will be a cool place to hang out, both literally - he's working on air-conditioning solutions at the moment - and figuratively.

Besides new and used vinyl by the likes of Nick Cave, Spiritualized and Pavement, he installed pinball machines, a checkerboard floor, old theater seats and a leather couch to liven up the place.

"Nowadays, you can pretty much get anything you want online at the push of a button. Everything is at your fingertips," Ruland said. "I kind of long for the days when you might bump into somebody or you don't know what's going on at a place. Something great could be happening, and you just stumble upon it."

Click here to read the rest of Chris Deville's article:
http://www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2010/07/14/shopping-spoonful-records.html