Here’s a rewind to the days before streaming.
Hundreds of analogue enthusiasts spun through rare VHS, cassettes and even eight-tracks at the first-ever NYC Tape Fair in Bushwick on Sunday – as buyers said they’re getting sick of streaming shenanigans.
“It’s the artistry of it all: It’s easier to connect with the art when it’s in your hands, when you’re looking at it,” festival co-founder Anthony Morton, 33, told The Post at the inaugural fair, which included more than a dozen vendors at cafe-art gallery-record store Selva.
Organizer Ricardo Marerro, 30, said buyers are “curious and they want more.”
“I think people are fed up with streaming services and the options available to them are getting fewer every year,” added Marerro. “If you pay for a streaming service, you don’t own these movies.
“A lot more people are realizing that there’s a whole world of music and movies that are not on streaming services, and there’s a lot more to explore,” he added.
Morton, of Ridgewood, Queens – who was first introduced to the collecting world through his father’s bootleg Grateful Dead tapes – told The Post the quirky festival was born out of a “selfish want” for the pair to expand their cassette collections.
“We would often go to record stores and record fairs looking for tapes and, more often than not, there would be only five to 10 tapes at a table,” the Williamsburg resident said. “There were a lot of records, but we wanted more tapes. This is the first [festival] of its kind.”
The organizers argued “undervalued” cassettes – many of which were sold between $2 and $20 at the festival – are vastly cheaper than vinyl records, making them especially appealing to audiophiles as recession fears heighten.
“[Cassettes] have never gone away, especially in the DIY-type punk scenes – it’s always easier to make 20 tapes than it is to make 20 records,” Morton said, “but more people are buying them now.
“More people are selling them too,” he added. “I think we’re at a point where a lot of collectors are trying to offload some things, and that has opened up this new flood of amazing things into the world.”
Bushwick resident J Rivera, 36, said the affordability of the tapes and the ability to “disconnect” from the internet drove him back to tapes.
“I walk around with my Walkman, so there’s less phone interaction,” said Rivera, who made off with a roughly $100 haul from the festival – ranging from Deee-Lite to Jimi Hendrix to Tommy James and the Shondells to Judas Priest.
“You don’t just choose your favorite tracks, you kind of just vibe,” Rivera added. “I like the experience, it’s like when you go to the library and they don’t have every book, they have what they have and you can just browse.”
Cassette sales have surged 440% in the last decade, per NPR, and VHS stores are on the rise — from Blockbuster’s return in the UK to the opening of VHS stores from Maryland to California.
“I think it’s a lot more appealing to the people to do that now than ever before,” said Aaron Hamel, co-owner of Night Owl Video, a VHS and DVD store that opened in Williamsburg this year. “I saw the record resurgence, and I feel like physical media for movies is sort of the same environment [vinyl] was 20 years ago.”
At the NYC Tape Fair, Night Owl Video’s VHS sales included a copy of David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” and “Love Camp 7,” which Hamel describes as a “Nazi exploitation movie from the 70s.”
Many customers were simply on hand for a trip down memory lane.
“I’m nostalgic for a time where you could walk into a store and browse the shelves, look at a cover, read the blurb on the back, see what kind of special features are around there, and make a decision based on that,” Hamel said said. “With the way things are in the world today, there’s a desire to not live in this time period. Going backwards has, at times, been preferred.”
Musician and archivist Violet Sky, 24, picked up VHS copies of “Night Eyes 2” and “Earth Girls Are Easy.”
“In a world of streaming, companies have the option to pull things from platforms, and you don’t truly own anything – so it’s really cool to be able to own your own media.”