Save the Vinyl

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Blake Baxter, one of Detroit's second-generation techno artists and a longtime collaborator of the genre's founders, opened Save the Vinyl in 1992 in the corner building at Grand River Avenue and Griswold Street, in what's now Detroit's Capitol Park district. The shop became a hangout for the city's electronic music scene through the 1990s, a place where DJs and producers dug through crates and traded records and gossip. Baxter closed the store in 1999 as the neighborhood and record retail both shifted, and the building eventually became the coffee shop Urban Bean Co., whose owner built a DJ booth upstairs as a nod to the address's techno history. Urban Bean Co. later rebranded as the bar Spkrbox, keeping the same techno-friendly spirit in the same corner storefront. Baxter has returned to DJ sets at the address more than once, treating it as a kind of homecoming to the room where his shop once stood.

1. Blake Baxter's record store, open from 1992 to 1999
2. Located at Grand River Avenue and Griswold Street, Capitol Park
3. A hub for Detroit's 1990s techno and electronic music scene
4. Space later became Urban Bean Co., then the bar Spkrbox
5. Baxter has returned to DJ sets at the same corner