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Owner Steve Mintz (sitting at right) and customers amidst Bagatelle’s huge stock. Photos by Greggory Moore.

Fingerprints gets all the press. It’s big and hip. Yo La Tengo and Foo Fighters have played there. Lou Reed dropped by. Owner Rand Foster co-produces the Summer And Music (SAM) series. It was major news when the shop relocated from Belmont Shore, and it has helped vitalize the corridor between Downtown and the East Village Arts District.

But nary two blocks away is that other record store, which since 1977 has consistently offered a broad array of music to fans and collectors worldwide, weathering the many changes in the retail reality of records that have rocked the music world during the past 35 years. That store is Bagatelle Records.

The Bagatelle story began in 1974, when owner Steve Mintz had a little shop located on a spot now overrun by Walmart selling antique furniture and collectibles. Records made up a small part of percentage of his wares, but the more the thought about it, the greater the temptation to move in this direction.

“Records seemed more glamorous to me,” he says. “And I wouldn’t have to deliver furniture.”

And so Bagatelle Records was born. Almost immediately it faced an existential challenge: the compact disc. But this was neither the last nor greatest trial Mintz’s chosen trade would face.

“The CDs came out in the early ’80s, and I was really worried,” he says. “[…] After that, the Internet started, and people started file-sharing. That kind of affected me, too. But what was the real killer was the iPod.”

Nevertheless, Mintz has found that there is enough demand for quality, rather than just for convenience, to keep Bagatelle going.

“When people share songs over the Internet, the quality, the bandwidth, is not there,” he says. “[…] I’ve always sold to Baby Boomers and to people who weren’t Internet-savvy. The youngsters were just file-sharing and downloading onto their computers and like that. But they were getting a quality of sound that wasn’t as good as CD and the record. […] Back in the day, people would have a real outrageous stereo system, with the big speakers, nice turntable, nice receiver, blah blah blah. It was like a macho thing. It was like having a muscle car. You’d go over to your buddy’s house and crank it up. Although it wasn’t necessarily the cranking it up: it was the sound quality. Well, what’s happening with these youngsters right now is, there’s a resurgence of seeking out records. Because they’ve been used to the sound they’ve been getting from the downloads, and they’re enlightened by the sound quality of records.”

Mintz says that although he has sold all genres and formats of music, records have always been his bread and butter, and that his big sellers to 20-somethings are the same as for Mintz’s own generation—a trend he would like to altered.

“They [i.e., the so-called “millenials” as a generation] are seeking out whoever the tastemakers may be, whether [that is] Rolling Stone magazine or Trouser Press or some blog,” he says. “They’re following directions regarding who are the people to get a hold of on record. […] They’re constantly coming in here asking for Pink Floyd or Neil Young, Black Sabbath…. It’s the usual suspects, but they don’t realize that there are groups equally as good and equally as creative as the groups they’ve been told to seek out by some guru. For example: Pink Floyd. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes, Traffic—these groups are every bit as good as Pink Floyd. Or at least that’s my opinion.”

Mintz says that the main reason most all of the product in which Bagatelle traffics is used is because of the low profit margin he can turn on new product, including reissues of classic albums. He says that having physical location in an area (on Atlantic Avenue just south of 3rd Street) with little foot traffic area means he needs a big bang on investment.

Mintz speculates that, in general, retailers like Bagatelle with physical locations will not be making a comeback, in Long Beach or anywhere.

“We’re in a brave new world,” he says. “[…] In the world I grew up in, when you needed something, you went to a brick-and-mortar [establishment]. In the last 15 years, that has changed. A lot of stores have closed. Examples would be the Borders, Circuit City…We could go on and on. People are buying more product off the Internet. So what has happened is that a lot of places that used to be commercial retail space are going out of business. […] The old adage ‘Location, location, location’ is still true, but it’s been distilled. What I mean is that people still want to see and be seen, socialze, do a little window-shopping, so they’ll go to promenade in Santa Monica, Colorado Blvd., 2nd St. in Belmont Shore, places like that; but in the peripheral areas you’ll see a lot of commercial property that is vacant. A lot of real-estate people think, ‘Okay, once the economy comes back, these places are going to be filled again.’ But that’s not going to happen, because too many people are buying their books on Amazon. […] This is happening throughout the United States. There are still going to be retail shops—there’s just going to be a lot less of them.”

Having persevered through all the technological and economic changes he’s encountered, Mintz says business is improving. He’s not sure whether this is due to an improved economy, the millenials’ burgeoning interest in records, and/or other factors, because for the last six years he has been less attentive to business than he would like to have been, opting to focus more on caring for his ailing sister during the last years of her life.

“I felt it was more important to care for my sister than to make a buck,” he says. “Because of that, my business suffered. […] But I’m getting back into it again.”

That’s music to the ears of record-lovers in Long Beach and beyond.

Bagatelle Records is located at 260 Atlantic Ave., and they’ve got a hell of a selection. See for yourself 11AM to 5:30PM Monday through Saturday. For more information, call (562) 432-7534 or visit bagatellerecords.com.

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