#pierplatters

Business card for Hoboken, NJ record store Pier Platters, acquired sometime in the early 1990s.

Great record store, or greatest record store?

Even though it wasn’t situated in New York City proper, Pier Platters was the best record store in the NYC area during its existence, for sure. A short hop on the PATH train away from my West Village apartment, it was the go-to spot for the latest domestic and import indies, as well as covetable used rarities tacked to the shop’s walls.

It was in Pier Platters on one September day in 1991 that I heard Nirvana’s then-new album, Nevermind in its entirety. (Hey, much poppier than that Sub Pop single I listened to last year!) It’s where I stared longingly at the copy of the very first Slumberland single on their wall, priced at what seemed to be an outrageously-high price: $20. And it’s where I was able to stock up on many of my Flying Nun favorites that other stores didn’t carry.

Mail-order catalog for Hoboken, NJ-based record store Pier Platters, postmarked August 12, 1993.

No, it wasn’t enough that I lived just over the river in Manhattan. I needed to get the latest dispatches from Hoboken record store Pier Platters delivered right to my door. Every so often I’d get a mail-order catalog just like this, the only one of the bunch I managed to hang on to.

Just as I did with the Ajax catalog, I’d pore through every line of every page, marking items of interest. Here, I believe the code to my double-color highlighter system was yellow = maybe and blue = definitely. Though I inevitably narrowed down even those “definitely”s based on my budget and what was still in stock by the time I got the catalog and managed to place my order via phone with the store. According to my hand-written note at the top of the first page, I placed a $45 order (plus $5 for postage) on August 27th at 1pm. (Why note the time? I have no idea.)

While I’ve included a couple of the inside pages in this post, I also scanned and uploaded the entire catalog here. But you can get an idea of my definitely/maybe picks from the two inside pages above. The C’s included The Chills, Alex Chilton, Choo Choo Train and Codeine. And among the Various Artists comps that caught my eye were the Propeller Records Laughing at the Ground 7″, the Shrimper label’s Swing Set 7″, and two different ones from the  Simple Machines label.