The clock strikes noon. Vinyl record enthusiasts quickly fill the event space lining the back of Triple Crossing Beer’s Fulton location, and Quinn Cunningham can finally take a deep breath.
“The stress of, ‘I hope it goes right and people are going to show up,’ I don’t think those things are ever going to go away,” says Cunningham, organizer of the Crates record shows and proprietor of online shop Funk Trunk Records. “But overall I do get to enjoy myself. Once the door opens and people come through the door, I’m chill and I can actually relax a little bit.”
He’s not the only one who’s amped up when a Crates show kicks off. New album sales numbers are often cited as evidence of vinyl’s comeback, but statistics fall short of conveying the nervous energy that wells up outside record fairs, or in a pre-dawn line on Record Store Day, as eager collectors compare notes on what they’re hoping to find and plot their first moves for the moments after opening time.
The twice-yearly Crates shows aren’t immune, but as the afternoon draws on – with DJs spinning, adrenaline receding and Falcon Smash IPA flowing – these shows tend to find an easier groove reflecting Cunningham’s own steady demeanor and mission “to make everyone feel like once they walk through that door, they belong there. They’re welcome.”
Cunningham has had plenty of practice. The previous Crates show, in April, was the fourth to take place at Triple Crossing since its start there in 2021. But the series was actually founded in Chicago in 2015 as the Rogers Park Music Swap and rebranded as Crates when a brewery in Evanston expressed interest in hosting. Cunningham’s own wax-slinging dates back even further to 2010, when he was living in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky and working at a store that sold used video games, DVDs and records. “[The records] were kind of neglected,” he remembers. “I’ve always been a big music lover, so I took on the task of manning the records then, and that’s where I started to learn a little bit more about them.”
He moved to Chicago the next year and opened a store in the city’s northernmost neighborhood, Rogers Park. “It wasn’t really a well-planned thing,” he admits. “It was just something I loved to do, and the neighborhood I lived in in Chicago didn’t have any record stores.” The Funk Trunk storefront lasted from 2014 to 2016 amid headwinds that are clear to Cunningham in hindsight: a lack of foot traffic was one, and there was a demographic issue; Frunk Trunk specializes in soul, funk and disco, music that caters to DJs and producers who weren’t likely to be living nearby and who might not be interested in a 30–40 minute northbound train ride.
Ironically, Cunningham did want to be on the move, leading to an even more fundamental mismatch when it came to maintaining a brick-and-mortar presence. “I’m used to going and looking for records,” he says, “so being this thing in one physical place and not having the ability to look for records was pretty tough.”
Crate digging — hunting for old albums with personal, monetary or professional value — is part-art form, part-obsession. “I’ll look for records any way I can,” Cunningham says. Sometimes that means responding to Facebook Marketplace ads, other times he’s crossing a state line or two on a hunch. “There’s not really a rhyme or reason. I’ll look at a map, see where there’s a decent-sized population and just go and throw feelers out… Wherever they pop up, I’ll take the risk and take the adventure.”
He’s not alone, and Crates places around two dozen likeminded sellers — some based in Richmond, others chosen by Cunningham to come in from out of town — in one space. It’s as much an opportunity to get to know one another as it is a chance to dole out discs. Joe Redling was among the vendors at April’s event, having traveled to Richmond from Raleigh, North Carolina. He’s been collecting for a dozen or so years and finds himself increasingly drawn to the record show circuit. “I feel like the price, the variety and the connection and relationship aspect — it’s all superior to your modern brick-and-mortars or your online experience,” he says.
A part-timer with five kids and a full-time job, Redling had a more compact, single-table setup at Crates. “Just a small little corner of the shop,” as he puts it. Crates afforded him an opportunity to whittle down his personal collection. “I told [Quinn], ‘I’m small potatoes, man,’” Redling says. “I don’t have 20 crates, but my life motto is ‘quality not quantity for all things.’”
Aaron Bushman, a repeat Crates vendor under the Commonwealth Records banner, has noticed Cunningham’s knack for finding quality vendors. “Crates is really cool in the sense that Quinn really tries to curate it,” Bushman says. “He invites a lot of people he’s built relationships with around the country buying records, so folks come with some interesting records.”
Bushman is a lifelong collector who first started selling in order to pay for the hobby. Realizing he was unhappy in his corporate job, he decided to turn vinyl into his vocation. When he’s not at a show like Crates, the Richmonder sells records online and keeps a few bins at the Blue Bones Vintage store stocked with gems. “It’s not the most lucrative gig in the world,” he says, “but I’m much happier doing this than before.”
“I’ve been doing this probably 10 years,” Cunningham says, “and back to it full-time for the past year, and I understand the difficulty of surviving off this niche thing. Trying to provide something for sellers that can rely on — that is really important.”
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Aaron Bushman sees and appreciates those efforts. He’s found Crates to be a valuable event for everyone involved. “[Quinn] tries to make it worthwhile for people coming from out of town,” Bushman says. “If you’re going to drive down from DC or up from Virginia Beach, you’ll find some stuff that makes your trip worthwhile.”
Predictable value amid pleasantly unpredictable searching: That’s where the goals of vendors and patrons meet. “I think that’s the best thing about going to a record show or a record store,” Cunningham says. “I always find something that’s like, ‘I didn’t know what this is, but this is incredible.’”
It’s not unlike the story of how the Funk Trunk owner ended up in Richmond.
“It’s been a great fit, but it was kind of on a whim,” Cunningham says of his 2019 move to Richmond with his now-wife, Brittany. They were looking for a change of pace. “We were working hard for a long time,” he says, “and I think we really wanted to come to a smaller city with a more relaxed feel.”
He’d visited Richmond a couple of times during his stint running the buying side of Reverb LP, an attempt by the instrument selling website Reverb to unseat the monolithic online vinyl marketplace, Discogs. Reverb went on to be purchased by Etsy in 2019, but not before Reverb LP landed a few body blows to Discogs’ hegemony. “[Discogs] changed their interface,” Cunningham says, “which was definitely a result of Reverb LP, so good things did come out of that … I think that was a cool little part — that Discogs did pay attention.”
While Cunningham wasn’t crazy about Richmond’s hot climate during his first visit, he eventually warmed to the city, getting to know some of the record stores in town — including Plan 9, Deep Groove and the sorely missed Steady Sounds shop, which he calls “probably one of the best stores I’d ever been to” — as well as sellers who operated outside the brick-and-mortar model. “I actually knew some dealers who set up the private shows that had some records, so I thought the landscape of records was really good.”
Despite hosting a thriving vinyl community, the bulk of Funk Trunk’s online sales slip through Richmond’s hands. Funk Trunk has developed a whole other community online, and knowing the routine is crucial. Each time there’s a drop — a batch of records Cunningham has sourced and added to the Funk Trunk website — the most desirable titles fly off the virtual shelves. “They’ve become events,” Cunningham says. “We’ll do a drop, and it’s just a frenzy.”
Rarities often go to the United Kingdom and France, Cunningham says, though he sends even more media mailers to California. “They’re a big DJ and a big funk community,” he notes. After a few minutes of post-drop silence, Cunningham’s email fills up with a string of orders, and the Instagram post announcing the items’ availability accumulates comments — some from those who snoozed and lost out. “Damn whoever snagged that Idris,” one user said after failing to snag a copy of Idris Muhammad’s “Turn This Mutha Out” during an early April drop.
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Old records have a way of getting under your skin, especially the elusive ones. The most motivated Crates shoppers are welcome to plan ahead via preview posts shared on Instagram by sellers and reposted by the Crates account. But at its best, when expectations are set aside, flipping your way through a room with thousands of thoughtfully chosen albums becomes a zen-like exercise in discovering the answer to a question you didn’t yet know to ask.
“Go to a table and just dig,” Cunningham recommends. “Be carefree about it. I think we’re all there for the same reason. We love records, and the joy of music is there, so you should be able to enjoy yourself in those spaces.”
That joy is everywhere you look at Crates, though don’t be surprised if this next installment, scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 5, has a more bittersweet atmosphere. Cunningham recently revealed via social media that this would be the final Crates show, saying “it’s on to bigger things.” Crates regulars will likely keep their eyes peeled for Cunningham’s next move, however. Whether in Chicago or Richmond, he has dedicated himself to “providing a space where people can actually meet one another and talk about records and nerd out.”
“It makes record collecting fun,” he says. “It makes more people join, and it makes the longevity of it more of a reality.”
The final Crates record show will take place Sunday, Nov. 5 at Triple Crossing Beer’s Fulton location. For updates, visit instagram.com/crates_record_show. To catch the next Funk Trunk Records drop, visit funktrunkrecords.com.
