Bleecker Bob's Records: Greenwich Village's Legendary Record Store

In Greenwich Village, on the corner of West 3rd Street and MacDougal, there was a record store that operated for over 40 years and became one of the most famous in the world. Bleecker Bob's Records was not the largest record store in New York. It was not the most organized. But it was, for a very specific kind of music fan, the most essential.

The Store

Bleecker Bob's was founded in 1967 by Robert Plotnik — Bleecker Bob — and operated in various locations in Greenwich Village before settling at its famous West 3rd Street address. The store specialized in punk, new wave, heavy metal, and underground music at a time when those genres were ignored or actively disdained by mainstream retail.

The store was open late — sometimes until 3 or 4 in the morning — which made it a destination for musicians, night owls, and anyone who needed a record at an hour when no other store was open. The staff were famously opinionated, the selection was deep, and the atmosphere was exactly what a great independent record store should feel like: slightly chaotic, intensely knowledgeable, and completely committed to the music.

The Clientele

Bleecker Bob's was a crossroads of New York music culture. Punk musicians from the CBGB scene shopped there. Heavy metal fans made pilgrimages from the outer boroughs. Tourists discovered records they'd never heard of. And musicians from around the world, passing through New York on tour, stopped in because Bleecker Bob's was the kind of store you heard about before you arrived.

The Closure

Bleecker Bob's closed in 2013 after 46 years, a victim of rising rents in a Greenwich Village that had become one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world. The closure was mourned across the music world — the end of an institution that had outlasted most of its contemporaries and remained genuinely independent to the end.

The Bleecker Bob's Records New York Retro T-shirt is for everyone who made the pilgrimage to West 3rd Street. Find it in the New York collection.