Every week the Town Crier blog will look back at Seattle’s near-forgotten Town Crier magazine to see what was happening then and talk about what’s happening now. One of the largest sections of the original Town Crier was “What People Are Doing,” highlighting things like, “The first week of the month had many of us making frequent trips to the ice box and mixing cooling drinks” and, “The Tuesday evening dances at the Red Cross Jumble Shop have become pleasant weekly habits.” In this series we’re revisiting the old column and tying it to our community’s current happenings, asking: “what are people doing?”

Today’s entry…

There was a time, a hundred years ago, that people hunted by phonograph.

“A phonograph has been put to a very novel use by seal hunters of the Pacific,” a story read in the July 19, 1919 edition of the Town Crier. “A large instrument, but one which is of a convenient shape for transportation, is made use of, and it is set up near the rendezvous of the animals, and soon its music attracts their attention and they lift their heads well above the water.” You might imagine what happens next. “A hunter reports that he has been able to shoot large numbers of them while they are under the spell of sounds so strange to their ears.”

A hundred years later, we no longer hunt by phonograph but we certainly go hunting for vinyl. A list of ten record stores in Seattle (by all means, not a comprehensive list):

Bop Street Records in Ballard.

Daybreak Records in Fremont.

Easy Street Records in West Seattle.

Everyday Music on Capitol Hill.

Fantagraphics in Georgetown.

Golden Oldies in Wallingford.

Jive Time Records in Fremont.

Neptune Music Company in the University District.

Sonic Boom in Ballard.

Spin Cycle on Capitol Hill. 

Happy hunting.