1 week Ago
Animal Records and owner Greg Allen Credit: Leor Galil Greg Allen opened Evanston's newest record shop in September—just barely. In a flush of optimism, he'd put a sign in the window at 624 Grove Street declaring that Animal Records would open then, but he quickly ran out of time. "It was September 30," he says.
"I'm looking at my watch, and it's 4:30 in the afternoon. I'm like, 'Dang, man, we're not gonna get opened in September.'" A friend of the shop's only other employee didn't think Allen should drag the process out, though—after all, they had a remodeled storefront and some records already on display.
So Allen put aside his misgivings and threw open the doors to Animal Records for the first time late on a Monday. "We're running a couple weeks behind, but we got opened, which is the important thing," Allen says. "All the customers who come in, I say, 'Hey, listen, please be patient with us, 'cause it's a work in progress.
' We don't have anything alphabetized yet, but everything that's on the floor is priced." It might take Allen a minute to get every last detail in order, but he's been preparing for this for a long time. He bought record bins from Evanston shop 2nd Hand Tunes after it closed in 2013, and he bought record dividers from Dave's Records in Lincoln Park after owner Dave Crain closed that store at the end of 2022.
"We haven't put any of the divider cards out yet, though," Allen admits. And Allen's got records, of course. He's collected for decades.
"I've always kind of known that I wanted to own a record shop," he says. "I've always just been buying big amounts of records in bulk. Sometimes I'll buy 'em off collectors, sometimes at garage sales, estate sales—you name it.
" Allen estimates he's amassed between 40,000 and 50,000 records for the shop, though less than 10 percent are priced for sale. In the early 1990s, Teenbeat Records put out a couple releases by Allen's wacky rock band, Sexual Milkshake—their EP Space Gnome and Other Hits..
. Leor Galil.
