Williamsburg Record Store Norman’s Sound & Vision Closes Its Doors
The awning is still up, but the store has been cleared out and signs on the window show the landlord is looking for a new tenant.
Photo by Craig Hubert
Amid a boom for record stores across the borough, a vinyl institution has shut up shop in Williamsburg.
Norman’s Sound & Vision, located at 555 Metropolitan Avenue, shuttered late last year. The awning is still up, but the store has been cleared out and signs on the window (as well as online listings) show the landlord is looking for a new tenant.
The store opened at 67 Cooper Square in Manhattan in 1994 and was known, for many years, as a destination for those who liked to dig through piles of old records and compact discs. After a rent hike, according to an article in The Local East Village, they were pushed out of the neighborhood and ended up in Williamsburg, where they opened up the second incarnation of the shop in August 2012.
“Now the people who live here are lawyers and stockbrokers; they’d much rather go play golf than listen to music,” he told The Local East Village about his former neighborhood in 2012. His hope was to find a younger, music-savvy audience in Williamsburg. But in the intervening years, Williamsburg has also changed.
It’s unclear if Norman’s has closed for good. Attempts to reach out to the store’s owner, Norman Issacs, were unsuccessful. For the moment, the store continues to sell records online.
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