About this listing
Important store for record collectors and musicians
Place Details
Borough : Bronx
Neighborhood : City Island
Place Matters Profile
Please note: Mooncurser Records closed, ca. 2006.
Mooncurser Records is one of City Island's fascinating destinations, and the kind of specialty music store that attracts music aficionados from the New York region and beyond.
Traveling down City Island Avenue past seafood restaurants and antique shops, in a strip of the Bronx far removed from the crowded city streets of the Hub or Southern Boulevard, is an unassuming storefront that hosts Mooncurser Records. Above the steps and front door is a large vinyl record, the only clue to the treasure that is housed inside. Mooncurser Records is a record collector’s dream. It was established in 1991 and holds over one million LPs (78s, 45s, 33s, and 16s [valued by collectors] and over 12,000 song sheets from as far back as the 19th century. Inside are shelves upon shelves of records--Latin music, jazz, rock, country--something for any music lover.
Mooncurser Records was founded by Roger Roberge. A lifetime music buff, his children remember that he
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Please note: Mooncurser Records closed, ca. 2006.
Mooncurser Records is one of City Island's fascinating destinations, and the kind of specialty music store that attracts music aficionados from the New York region and beyond.
Traveling down City Island Avenue past seafood restaurants and antique shops, in a strip of the Bronx far removed from the crowded city streets of the Hub or Southern Boulevard, is an unassuming storefront that hosts Mooncurser Records. Above the steps and front door is a large vinyl record, the only clue to the treasure that is housed inside. Mooncurser Records is a record collector’s dream. It was established in 1991 and holds over one million LPs (78s, 45s, 33s, and 16s [valued by collectors] and over 12,000 song sheets from as far back as the 19th century. Inside are shelves upon shelves of records--Latin music, jazz, rock, country--something for any music lover.
Mooncurser Records was founded by Roger Roberge. A lifetime music buff, his children remember that he played music from the moment he awoke until he went to sleep at night. There were music speakers in every room, even installed in the shower. Roger, who passed away in the summer of 2004, worked for the American Foundation for the Blind for 50 years, electro-plating records. After his retirement in 1975, he and his family opened an antique shop on City Island. They started the antique shop in the 1970s when City Island was a thriving artist community. Lining a few blocks in the middle of the island, antique shops, photograph shops, and restaurants abounded, the piers were open behind all the buildings and people were able to fish all day long, and the street was packed with people from morning to night.
After coming across a large collection of records one day at a sale, Roger steadily began to devote his business to selling records. In 1991 he moved a few doors down to a larger site (the current location), and recreated the interior from scratch. His son, Dennis, a carpenter, built huge shelves to hold the merchandise, which Roger would obtain from traveling to sales, auctions, antique shops, and private collectors almost every day.
His daughter Lynn says the interesting name of the store derives from an old legend passed down in the state of Maine--where Roger was born and raised until moving to the Bronx as a teenager. The legend tells about locals living along the coast of Maine who would light lanterns on foggy nights to lure ships too close to the shore. The ships would crash against the rocks leaving their contents open to scavengers. On nights with a full moon lighting the shore, ships stayed clear, causing locals to "curse the moon." Roger felt as if he was a scavenger looking everywhere for music and records, hence the name.
His love of music also extended to the afterhours. Seven nights a week (reduced to five nights after falling ill later in life) he would travel throughout New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, and upstate New York to listen to music. His obsession with music led him to create friendships with many musicians who would often stop by the store to visit, as well as to look for rare recordings. This is also evident in the store’s walls which are covered with autographed photos of numerous musicians, ranging from Woody Herman to Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria.
Roger never had to advertise, because musicians and collectors spread the news of his establishment by word of mouth. People from all around the country, as well as from places like Germany and Japan have heard of Mooncurser, and stop by. Roger didn’t want to advertise, anyway, because he ran the store as a labor of love; it was not a business to him. And in the last few years Roger didn’t have to shop for the records; people brought them to him. Some mornings he would open the store to find boxes of records left on the doorstep.
Another record collector, John Rykala, bought Mooncurser's inventory and took over its lease in January 2005, after reading an ad in the Village Voice about the pending sale of 100,000 records. He thought it was another crazy collector like himself. When he stepped into the store, he felt as if he was home. With a collection about the same size as Mooncurser's, he seems to be the perfect match for the legendary store.
So far, Rykala has been keeping the store open on Saturdays and Sundays, and while he struggles to move in his own collection, is also trying to persuade the owner of the building to renew the lease. He wants to keep the store there because of its history, and because there aren't that many other affordable places to move over 100,000 LPs.
