By TIM STELLOH – NY Times
Joe Long has tried closing his legendary Brooklyn music shop, Birdel’s Records, before.
Two years ago, Mr. Long posted a going-out-of-business sign in the windows of his Bedford-Stuyvesant storefront, which opened in 1944. With the decline of the music industry and of his profits, and the fact that no family member wanted to take over, he’d had enough. Mr. Long, now 73, began working at Birdel’s in 1957 and had owned the shop since the late 1960s. He was ready to retire, he said.
But to hear him tell it, the neighborhood wouldn’t let him. [Read More]