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Rockin' On

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Parent Issue
Day
29
Month
May
Year
1991
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Steve Bergman shows off some of Schoolkids' most popular offerings.

ROCKIN' ON

Schoolkids' marks 15 years of eclectic musical offerings

By CHRIS RODE

Anyone who owns a couple record albums could spend hours browsing through Schoolkids’ Records.

Known for its cosmopolitan atmosphere, wide variety of titles and efficient stocking, Schoolkids’ is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month.

“We’ve been here 15 years already, and we plan to be here another 50,” says Steve Bergman, owner of the store at 523 E. Liberty St. “We’re doing it the best way we can, and it seems to work."

The store has been through a few moves and a renovation. More importantly, it has made it through the great shake-out of the 1980s in which chain stores prevailed over independent mom-and-pop operations on which record collectors and those with more exotic music tastes relied.

Bergman remembers with some satisfaction that when a chain outlet record store opened across the street from Schoolkids’ back in the mid-1970s, it didn’t last long.

“We’re not in the numbers game,” says Bergman about the 20,000-plus titles at Schoolkids’. “Anyone can pick up a catalog and order one of everything. We have people here that have talent in picking music. They come up with a remarkable collection that’s just about right for everyone’s tastes.”

Schoolkids’ offers a wide variety of rock ’n’ roll, popular and esoteric rock, jazz, blues, folk and Japanese and European imports.

“Ann Arbor is a remarkably divergent and tolerant town,” says Bergman, who serves as president of the State Street Area Association. “It would be hard to find the educational base we have here someplace else. We’re probably the only music store able to sell 100 copies of ‘Les Miserables’ and 100 copies of ‘Dinosaur Junior.’ ”

Specifically designed to serve several major music tastes, Schoolkids’ has remained loyal to its vinyl LP customers. About 20 percent of prime floor space is stubbornly stocked with LPs despite its rapidly dwindling share of the recorded music market.

Bergman’s love affair with the record business and Ann Arbor began almost 15 years ago, when a close friend and business partner convinced him to leave the University of Florida just one semester shy of graduating.

While in college, he had been working in a record store in Gainesville. He came to Ann Arbor to help open Schoolkids’ and soon bought his partner out.

He recalls sleeping in the store with newspapers over his face because he hadn’t found a place to live. At the time, Schoolkids’ shared space with a magazine shop and a copying company, which was open all night.

Five years ago, Bergman opened SKR Classical, a store at 539 E. Liberty that specializes in classical music and receives orders from around the world. “We did that way before all the other stores in Detroit started having separate classical stores,” Bergman says. “I think we set the pace. We really buck the trends.”

Meanwhile, his Schoolkids’ store has been rated as one of the top 20 in the country and has earned testimonials from the likes of Dave DiMartino, the Los Angeles bureau chief for Billboard Magazine, who called Schoolkids’ “my favorite record store in America.”