Nearly 400 students and Gainesville residents congregated downtown Sunday afternoon to buy, sell and trade vinyl records underneath tents and amid fellow music-loving, beer-drinking folk.
Two years ago, 26-year-old Daniel Halal held the first Vinyl Fiesta on the deck joining Boca Fiesta restaurant and Palomino Pool Hall on Southeast First Street. Halal said he plans to hold another Vinyl Fiesta in the spring.
"A lot of times record shows are much bigger and you get these snooty, crotchety old men and it just isn't fun," said Halal, who used to live in Gainesville but now owns a record label and shop called Vinyl Rites in Athens, Ga. "We wanted to do a similar thing but gear it more toward our friends."
Most of the vendors were from Gainesville, where they buy and sell records at shows and from their homes.
Records from all music genres were for sale, priced from 50 cents to $20.
Local musician and Gainesville resident John Berna, 24, said he was thrilled to be around vinyls. They are a piece of a larger experience which he thinks is disintegrating.
"The day an album came out, I'd skip school, go to the mall with my friends and buy it, and then we would go listen to it," Berna said. "We'd sit at the turntable, listen to the record and look at the artwork. Today, all people see is a track listing on their iTunes."
Jim Johnston, a local resident and vendor at the event, said he was just happy to see so many young people buying vinyls, a medium he thought would die when CDs came out.
"Twenty years ago I was going to record shows and doing the same thing," said Johnston, 44. "It's nice to keep it going. We gotta keep it going."
