Ben VanderHart describes himself as “kind of stubborn,” so when the coronavirus pandemic hit just about a week or two after he’d signed a lease on a building on Main Street, he dove head first into opening the Yellow Racket Records store he has dreamed of owning for several years.
Like everyone else, he has had to adapt his original vision, so the coffeeshop and live music aspects of the store are on hold, and customers can’t actually enter the store to browse his inventory. Instead, they can go online at yellowracketcha.com and shop. They can either have the product shipped to them, or they can drive up to the front door, text him and get the item brought out to the vehicle.
“We launched at the end of June,” VanderHart said.
He hopes to open the doors later this month or in early August, but is weary of opening only to have to close because the case numbers keep rising.
The store is on East Main Street across from East Side Elementary, and the current inventory includes about 800 new-in-the-shrink-wrap records and somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 used records.