The Upside of Flipside

How bizarre would it be to find a sold-out screening at one of NYC’s most storied theaters for a film about a store in the tiny town that you came from?

That happened last weekend when director Christopher Wilcha’s documentary Flipside had a multi-day run at the IFC Center, chronicling a record store from my lil’ hometown, Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

Just for context, Pompton Lakes is a Passaic County suburb at the edge of the Ramapo Mountains, about a 45 minute drive from Gotham. It’s kept a steady population of 10,000 people for the last several decades and has a mayor that only does the job part-time. It’s nice and bucolic, and kind of boring — the roughly three-block downtown area is full of store fronts with “For Sale” signs and is shut down well before 8PM on weekends. 

Pompton Lakes does boast one cultural outpost though. Flipside 2 Records is a small shop that’s sat at the edge of downtown for decades. Crammed in the narrow aisles is a paradise for music nuts- tons of old, classic vinyl, with many surprises to be found, as if you’re in a one-stop mini record fair. Even with recent competition from a book shop only a few hundred feet away (Station 1, housed in an old caboose) that sells plenty of vinyl, Flipside 2 has managed to keep its doors open for almost 40 years now, thanks to its steadfast owner, Dan Dondiego. As he likes to point out, that’s actually the correct spelling, as many articles have butchered it otherwise.

Meanwhile, after Wilcha 2000’s highly praised debut The Target Shoots First (about his attempts to stay sane in the corporate world), he soon found himself sought after… for making commercials. But he also found work in videos, TV movies and most notably the cultural phenom This American Life. After being stuck for years with various fascinating films that he couldn’t complete, he stumbled upon Flipside 2 and had a big a-ha moment, not only could he sing the praises of the store but he could also fold in a number of unfinished doc projects in there, such as those covering jazz photographer Herman Leonard, his old TAL boss Ira Glass, legendary TV writer/producer David Milch (who put him on the Leonard project) and public radio producer/writer Starlee Kine. Though Flipside is overall concerned with Wicha’s battle to thread together all these projects, the record store sits at the center of his mission as he sings its praises and heroically tries to get it recognition. This mission spilled over to the Q&A session at the IFC screening, where he and Glass encouraged the hipster NYC crowd to make a pilgrimage to North Jersey to support the store.

While the movie does tell you some things about the store (including why the place smells of dried meat), as a local from there who frequented the place for years, I knew that there was still a lot missing and worth mulling over, including how the shop ties in with other local legends like the Feelies and more about NJ TV legend Uncle Floyd (who makes a great appearance in the film). The problem was that after going to the shop for decades, I could barely get Dan to say more than a few words at a time to me, a problem that Wilcha admitted that he had after a while. Incredibly enough, when I called the store and mentioned to Dan that I was a Pompton-ite too, he opened up and spoke to me more than he had for the last several decades, talking in more detail than he had in the film about his battles over Record Store Day, why he had to kill off his own graveyard, what he really thinks of the competition down the block, the previous history of the shop, how he keeps the place open, what he thinks of the documentary, what the real name of the store actually is, how he’s really a Reverend and what his future plans for the store might be.

I remember the first record store that was in the same place as you. I think it was called Colonial?

Colonial Toy and Records. The original owner was this guy named Harvey Fox who started it sometime in the ‘40s, but nobody can seem to pinpoint it. 

In the ’70s when I went there, it looked very different- it was so damn clean and organized. 

Oh yeah. He had a regular desk about mid-way down the aisle, on the right side.

I lived in Oakland at the time and the only way to get to Pompton Lakes was either the real long way around up Route 202 or to come down West Oakland Ave, which was not bicycle friendly. And as a kid, that’s how I got around. But I would get over here somehow and look for a record or two. And he was usually sound asleep at his desk, and there was a black cat that sat on the desk. And the cat would walk over to him and nudge him when someone walked into the store. I don’t know if he trained the cat to do that if the cat just knew to do that. It’s just, Jesus, it’s a watch-cat! I never heard of such a thing.

That’s funny. I do vaguely remember a cat there, but not on watch duty. So, your cousin took over the store from Harvey after that?

I guess so… I don’t know if there was another party in between or not. 

When you decided to take over the store in 1985, if I remember from the movie, you were doing landscaping work?

Yeah, it was the family landscaping business. It was a miserable hot humid day, like today. We were digging a blue spruce, which is a spiny plant. If you ever bumped into one, you’d know it ‘cause you’d get welts on you. It’s really sharp. So we were digging that thing and nobody was happy. We were probably all hungover and I was probably complaining the loudest and my friend Tom, who worked for us at the time, said “well, why don’t you just shut up and buy your cousin’s record store!” So I said, “you know what- I will!” So at the end of the day, I showered up and went over and said “what do you want for the store?” And he told me and I said “I’ll buy it” and that was it. 

So when you took it over, how did you redo the place?  The way you have it is a lot different than the more orderly, spaced-out way it was before.

Oh, it was a work in progress. It’s not like I renovated it overnight or a matter of weeks. It was just… add this, track that, sell that off, add more of this, acquire whatever you can. I went through various phases, selling posters, selling cassettes, whatever the market wanted at the time. You just have to change along with it.

What else do you mean by that? How did you accommodate otherwise?

It’s like, cassettes came and went. And then CD’s came. And I resisted because in part, CD’s were expensive at the time versus records, but records were disappearing so it was like, “OK, we have to go that route.”  So for a while, things were a little lean ‘cause I would have to sell the record and replace it on CD and that would cost more than what I made on the record. So you kept adding money to your inventory. But eventually, it leveled off and went back to normal. 

Just for accuracy’s sake, I’ve seen the name of the store as ‘Flipside 2’ sometimes. So is that or just ‘Flipside’?

It’s ‘Flipside 2.’  My cousin ran the store as ‘Flipside’ and I just used the other name to differentiate that.

I remember that some of the great promotional items from the old Colonial store made it over to you, like that mini Led Zeppelin inflatable blimp.

It’s still up there! It’s worth like 700 bucks now, probably more. That was the big one but I also still have a handful of record sets that are still in the shrink [wrap]. I mean they’re open but they still have the shrink wrap and they still have the Colonial Toy Store sticker on them. It’s like, “oh wow, this is from 1970!”

I saw in one of the store’s Instagram posts where you even have some sets of 78 RPM records in the back.

Oh yeah!  I’m a pack rat- it’s hard for me to throw things out. Especially when I do and then three days later, somebody wants it. They’re still here and I still have ‘em.

You also have a great selection of music-themed beer bottles around the store. Could you talk about that?

It’s one of the things… I like IPA’s and craft beers. And I would go into a beer shop in the area and see something on the wall like… Iron Fist beer, with a Motorhead logo on it. Alright… let’s try it out! And whether it was good or bad, it was like, “well, it’s music related so I think I’ll put it in the Motorhead section [of the store]”. I have a whole series of Verve label, Frank Zappa label.

Yeah, I did see one beer bottle with a Zappa’s “Reuben and the Jets” label on it at your store and I was so jealous that I scoured eBay for years until I found another one.

Oh, that one I might have an extra one of. It’s not going to be full, mind you.

Thanks but I did buy that one! So, you were talking before about your inventory and until I saw the film, I didn’t realize that you had a downstairs area of the store where you had even more albums. What exactly do you keep there that’s different from what the customers see in the store?

If you look through the store, you realize that there’s only one of each record. And now, all the duplicates are downstairs.  

So when you sell something in the store, you just replace it from another copy downstairs?

Yeah. That’s why I put a plastic sleeve on the record and write on there what I sold so I can take the sleeve downstairs and see if I have another one. I sure as hell can’t trust my memory anymore.

The last time I was at the store, I don’t think I saw the graveyard in the window to commemorate musicians. Do you still have that?

You mean the old cemetery headstones? Those are long gone. It just got to be too many of them. I couldn’t put enough headstones in the window. It just became pointless because you know, it was a jungle. 

But our own Influential Wall of Fame is back in the window and inside the building as well. There’s 10 in the window and probably about another 10-20 on the wall. It’s people who we consider influenced kids into picking up a guitar and learning to play music, more so than they sold a lot of records. So it’s everybody from Captain Beefheart to the Runaways. We got [Howlin’ Wolf guitarist] Hubert Sumlin, we got Can, King Crimson, Last Poets. These are all people who changed the direction of music, even if they didn’t have a huge financial impact on it.

At one time, you were playing with the guys in the Feelies. Do you still do that?

I still see them [NOTE: the editor here spotted percussionist Dave Weckerman there a few days before]. The Feelies have more or less solidified their line-up and that’s that. They still play out. 

I played bass mostly with Dave and we did Creeping Pumpkins. And I never really formed a band with him but I did play with Glenn [Mercer, singer/guitarist] a couple of times in the 90’s and maybe before that. It was just as a cover band- he wanted to do stuff like Hendrix songs and things like that, which obviously weren’t in the Feelies setlist. It was just a different outlet for him. We would just get together a couple of times and jam and Dave was in on that too. By that point, Bill [Million, singer/guitarist] had moved to Florida so they didn’t see him that much.

Do you have any plans to ramp up your online presence besides the Instagram page?

I don’t know. I don’t do that [Instagram]. That’s my friend Kerry- he posts the stuff online for me as he’s learning about it so it’s an exercise for him. I don’t even own a computer and I have a ‘dumb’ phone.

Related to that, are the Record Store Day people still cutting you out of their group because you don’t have a website?

I don’t know. I have no idea. They don’t answer any kind of correspondence. But yeah, I’ve been denied access.

That’s so stupid of them.

And at this point, I’m kind of glad. None of the stuff is returnable and it’s gone so far down hill that it’s such a crap shoot. I mean, I have stuff here from 10 years ago from Record Store Day when I could do it, before they closed the doors on me. So it’s like, yeah OK… And the other side of that coin is that everyone that does do Record Store Day tells me that there’s like maybe half a dozen titles that everyone wants, that they’re looking for, you know, a flavor of the month kind of thing, and they never make the production level they say, so a lot of people get shorted. So you get a lot of customers that are angry at you rather than people who are happy with you, so I’m glad I’m not doing Record Store Day.

Yeah, I’ve heard they play favorites.

I mean, I would consider it viable and doable if they would take a pre-order. Call me up. “How many copies of the Springsteen exclusive do you want…? OK, gimme four.. Or I’ll take 10- I got a lot of people looking for that.” And then make ‘em to order. That way, everybody’s happy! Why can’t they do that? [laughs] I mean, it’s a good ol’ boys club. I just don’t want to play that game anymore. 

What did you think of the Flipside documentary?

I think it deserves the accolades it’s getting. I mean, it’s really well shot, well edited, the whole thing. Chris is really brilliant at asking the right questions to get people to come out of their shell and the ones who were reluctant. Chris worked with Uncle Floyd and got him to open up and you see the results for yourself on the screen. He was very happy to be there. He’s an old pro.   

Do you think that the film also represented you, your work and the store well?

Hmm… Hadn’t thought about that. Visually, it shows that the place is cluttered, it’s full of stuff. And to paraphrase from the movie, that’s what a record store should be. You gotta look around, you gotta dig, you take an hour or so. You climb though some boxes and crates and then you find little gems- some stuff you were looking for and some stuff that you didn’t know that you were looking for. 

Or, like the other store in town… Well, it’s pretty well organized. He doesn’t have a whole lot of records, but it’s more… accessible. You don’t have to work for it. It’s all posted online- you just go in and ask for it and it’s yours. And that’s OK, but that’s a whole different kind of clientele. We cater to two different kinds of record collector.

So obviously, your store reflects how you are as a crate digger.

Oh yeah! I go to the record conventions and I immediately head to the bargain bins. It’s not like it used to be though. There was this one guy Chris who was from Long Island and his whole thing was ‘50s doo wop. He would buy whole collections of records and whatever he didn’t want for himself or to sell for himself, he would just blow it out cheap for like five bucks. I found some Scott Walker records there and all kinds of great stuff. Five dollars- you can’t beat it.

Did you get any increase in business recently from the documentary?

Well, last Saturday was a full house here most of the time during the day. At least half the people who came in say that they saw the movie. That was great. 

Are you at all concerned that you can keep the shop open for the next couple of years

Ah… I’m not really concerned about it for a couple of reasons. One is… the mean thing is, I’m too old to get a real job. I have to make it work. And I’m on social security at this point so it’s not a matter of needing the income. It just has to sustain itself. And it’s been doing that so far. So, I’m just gonna play it by ear.

I can’t see you retiring. This is your life, right?

Pretty much, yeah. Retirement Isn’t really an option.

If you couldn’t make it to the store every day, would you consider selling it to another music fan to keep it going?

Yeah, it’s a possibility. It’s one of those things that I’m starting to consider. It’s just that, how do I come up with a price for all this crap?

I admire you too because Pompton Lakes’ downtown isn’t exactly thriving. There’s been a lot of empty storefronts there for a long time, so it can’t be easy for you since you don’t have much run-off traffic from other stores around there. 

It just keeps changing all the time. Like back in 2008, when the economy tanked for a while, we had people all of a sudden that were out of work. “What do we do? Well, let’s open a restaurant.” But they last for a little while and then they go. So it’s just constant turnover and probably for a lot of other stores too. 

It’s great that you’ve found a way to keep your own store open.

My only secret is that I’ve found a way to keep the overhead down. I don’t need to get expensive signs or anything else that I don’t need.

At the end of the film though, they did show that you replaced the sign in front of the store after the town had complained that it was looking run down because of a storm.

[laughs] Well, actually the building people here paid for it themselves. I think it’s kind of like a school budget thing where they have X amount of money to spend for things around town and they had enough to pay for my sign so I got the nod. I don’t think it was for any great wealth of my shop. 

For Station 1, the store around the corner, you seem to shrug off the competition in the film but you really aren’t worried about it because you think it’s just a different type of customer there?

Yeah, like I said before, we appeal to different kinds of collectors and a hardcore collector is going to hit both shops. They’d be crazy not to. When I used to go into the city to buy records, we would always go to St. Mark’s Place ‘cause there were three record stores there within walking distance- it just made the most sense. So, in that respect, it does sort of make us a destination town. But I haven’t really seen any kind of increase or decrease because of him [Station 1]. It probably does happen at both levels but I don’t have any way of knowing. 

And obviously you wouldn’t move the store. You’d always have it right where it is, right?

Yeah, that’s right.

A bit of trivia — I’ve heard the title ‘Reverend’ attached to your name sometimes. What’s the story with that?

[laughs] Well, a while ago, I was in a band with this guy named Rick Sullivan and he had become an ordained minister the way that you mail in 25 bucks somewhere and you get a certificate. I did that too as a joke, so that’s how it happened. I never did any ceremonies or anything though.

Visit Flipside 2 Records at 120 Wanaque Ave, Pompton Lakes, NJ 07442 (phone: 973-835-8448). No mail order available. Store hours: 11AM-6PM, closed on Tuesdays & Wednesdays (Thursdays, usually open by 1PM). From NYC, take the 194 or 197 Bus at Port Authority, get off at the Wanaque Ave At Cannon Ball Road stop in Pompton Lakes (about an hour ride) and you’ll be one block from the store.

VIDEO: Flipside trailer 

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Jason Gross

Jason Gross is the editor/founder of Perfect Sound Forever, one of the first and longest-running online music magazines. He has written for Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Time Out, AP, New York, MTV, Oxford American, Billboard, MOJO, The Wire, and Blurt. Reissues and collections that he's produced included Delta 5, Essential Logic, Kleenex/Liliput, DNA, Oh OK and OHM –The Early Gurus of Electronic Music. He lives in New York with his girlfriend and 30 plush cats.

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