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In a frenetic digital era, he’s helping Angelenos rediscover the classic cassette player

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In a frenetic digital era, he’s helping Angelenos rediscover the classic cassette player

Stepping into Jr. Market boutique in Highland Park is like entering a 1980s time warp. Built into a refurbished shipping container, it’s filled with everything from tiny Walkman-style portables to colorful, number-flip clock radios and, naturally, boom boxes of all sizes. Few are more imposing than the TV the Searcher, a Sharp boom box from the early ’80s that features a built-in, 5-inch color television.

“Try lifting it, it’s really heavy,” warns Spencer Richardson, the shop’s owner. Indeed, the machine is at least 15 pounds without the 10 D batteries that power the unit. He adds, “I don’t think you’re taking this to the beach so you could watch TV while you listen to music.”

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An affable, hyper-knowledgeable proprietor in his early 30s, Richardson repairs and resells analog music technology from the 1980s or earlier. In bringing these rehabbed players back into circulation, he’s helping others rediscover a musical format once left for dead. While his hobby-turned-side hustle started as “a gateway to discover sounds” that he otherwise would not have heard, it now attracts curious customers willing to drop $100-plus for a vintage Technics RS-M2 or My First Sony Walkman. His customers include older baby boomers and Gen Xers nostalgic for the players of their childhood, but most have been millennials like himself, drawn to something tactile and analog in an era when everything else disappears into the digital ether.

A rare Technics RS-M2 stereo radio tape deck.

A rare Technics RS-M2 stereo radio tape deck. “I’ve worked on a lot of tape players and this one shouts quality inside and out,” Richardson writes on Instagram.

(Spencer Richardson)

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Unlike turntables, which have become increasingly high-tech thanks to the “vinyl revival” of the last 20 years, almost all cassette players in current production rely on the same, basic tape mechanism from Taiwan, Richardson explains. Though cassette culture is enjoying its own period of rediscovery — albeit on a far smaller scale — he hasn’t seen a market emerge for newly engineered tape decks. And he’s fine with that.

I’m not one of those people that’s like, ‘Why don’t they make good new tape players?’” he says. “No one needs to make it better. You’re still better off buying a refurbished one from the time when they made them.”

That’s where he steps in.

Richardson works on a Nakamichi tape deck out of his repair studio in downtown L.A.

Richardson works on a Nakamichi tape deck out of his repair studio in downtown L.A.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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It’s easy to forget that when cassettes debuted in the mid-1960s, the technology was groundbreaking. Not only were the players far more portable than turntables but unlike records, tapes were resilient to being tossed about. Even more profoundly, cassettes democratized access to the act of recording itself since cassette technology required minimal infrastructure and cost.

“I think about how incredible it must have been for people to realize they could just put whatever they wanted onto a tape, dub it, give it to a friend,” says Richardson.

Entire genres of music, especially in the developing world, became far more accessible across borders. In some countries, big records are still released on cassette. “I have a Filipino release of Kanye West’s ‘College Dropout’ on tape,” Richardson says.

The constraints of the technology guided the listening experience. Because skipping songs on a player was a hassle, most people sat with cassette albums as a track-by-track, linear journey, the antithesis to the algorithmic, shuffle-centric playlists ubiquitous on today’s streaming platforms. It’s a pace that Richardson appreciates.

“I want things to be intentional and slow,” he says. “I don’t need them to be optimized.”

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He learned how to repair gear by watching YouTube videos, perusing old manuals and through trial and error.

He learned how to repair gear by watching YouTube videos, perusing old manuals and through trial and error.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Born in the early 1990s, Richardson grew up in Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, where his mother’s home was lost in the L.A. wildfires last year. He’s just old enough to remember cassettes as a child: “My mom had books on tape like ‘Winnie the Pooh,’ but I wasn’t out buying tapes.” Fast forward to the mid-2010s and he was working at the now-defunct Touch Vinyl in West L.A. “Back in 2014, we started this little in-store tape label,” he explained. “Bands would come to play, and we’d duplicate 10 tapes and give them away or sell them.” Richardson slowly began collecting cassettes but after the store closed a few years later, he realized how hard it was to find people to service his tape players.

Finally, once the pandemic hit in 2020 and everyone was stuck at home, he decided to learn how to repair his gear by watching YouTube. “I was just fascinated by the videos, absorbing soldering techniques and tools you might need,” he said. With no formal engineering background, Richardson began collecting information online, perusing old manuals, learning through trial and error. “You just need to get your hands in there and be like, ‘Oh, OK, I see how this works,’ or maybe I don’t see how this works, and I’m just going to bang my head against the wall, and then a year later, try again.” His first successful repair was for his Teac CX-311, a compact stereo cassette player/recorder that he still owns. “It has some quirks but runs well.”

A few years later, Richardson’s girlfriend, Faith, suggested he start selling his players online via an Instagram account — jrmarket.radio — originally created for a short-lived internet station. Tim Mahoney, his childhood friend and a professional photographer, shot the units against a plain white backdrop, as if for an art catalog. A community of enthusiasts quickly found his account and Richardson began selling pieces online and via pop-ups. In 2024, the owners of vintage clothing store the Bearded Beagle invited him to take over the parking lot space behind their new location on Figueroa Street Opening a brick-and-mortar store hadn’t been his ambition but Richardson accepted the opportunity: “I never envisioned opening my own physical store. It’s hard enough to have a retail space in Los Angeles to sell something that’s very niche.”

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Jr. Market operates as a shop Thursday through Saturday in Highland Park.

Jr. Market operates as a shop Thursday through Saturday in Highland Park.

(Spencer Richardson)

Jr. Market — whose name is inspired by Japanese convenience stores known as “junior markets” — isn’t trying to appeal to audiophiles though Richardson does stock studio-quality recording decks. He primarily looks for players with appealing visual design, most of them made in Japan where Richardson has been traveling to since graduating high school. Through those trips, he’s learned where to source pristinely kept gear, including his best-selling Corocasse: a bright red plastic cube of a radio/tape player, introduced by National in 1983. He also keeps an eye out for the unique Sanyo MR-QF4 from 1979, an elongated boom box with four speakers, designed to play either horizontally or flipped into a vertical tower.

The store also stocks a small selection of portable record players, including a Victor PK-2, a whimsical, plastic-bodied three-in-one turntable, tape player and AM radio that looks like something designed by a modernist artist for Fisher-Price. That went to local author and historian Sam Sweet, who visited the store with no intention of buying anything and left with the Victor, which now sits on his writing desk. “Spencer’s part of a grand tradition of workshop tinkerers and specialty mechanics,” Sweet says. “The refurbished devices he sells are as much a reflection of his ethos and expertise as they are treasures of the past.”

Last year, Imma Almourzaeva, an Echo Park art director, came to the store and purchased a massive 1979 Sony Zilba’p boom box, which is nearly 2 feet wide and over a foot tall, with wood veneer panels to boot. Almourzaeva, who grew up in Russia in the ’90s, wanted a player that offered “the tactile feel of my childhood and bringing it back into my daily routine, something familiar, something warm.” The Zilba’p is the largest boom box Richardson has carried and Almourzaeva said, “It’s aesthetically a showstopper. Maybe I have a Napoleon complex because I’m pretty small too. It’s like ‘go big or go home’ for me.” She shared that she recently bought a Soviet-era boom box from Richardson for her brother for Christmas. “It turned out my mom grew up using the same brand of stereo,” Almourzaeva says. Richardson had told her that Soviet boom boxes are “very DIY, more funky and finicky.”

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Refurbishment is one of Richardson’s specialties, including repairing customer units, each of them a puzzle he enjoys solving. No matter if a player is sparse or feature-packed, the simple act of playing a cassette creates a sense of calm and focus for him. “You’re not distracted, because it doesn’t do anything else,” he says. In a time where every “smart” device is marketed with dizzying arrays of features, that simplicity can feel downright revolutionary.

Lifestyle

To be or not to be a parent : It’s Been a Minute

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To be or not to be a parent : It’s Been a Minute

Could you see your life just as easily with children as without? 

What if you’re not cut out for parenthood? What if you grow lonely in your old age? Or what if you have a loving partner, but you disagree on this choice? Deciding between parenthood and a child-free life requires clarity about your fears and deepest desires — no easy task. This episode, psychotherapist and author of the book, The Baby Decision, Merle Bombardieri, helps us get clear. She discusses minimizing regret, normalizing feeling ‘stuck’ and why waiting to have a baby at 38 may be best. 

Want more about the decision to have kids? 

Many women don’t want kids. And for good reason.
Why are people freaking out about the birth rate?

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Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.

Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluse

For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.

Additional support for this episode came from Alexis Williams. It was edited by Neena Pathak. Our Supervising Producer is Cher Vincent. Our Executive Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.

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Ahead of America’s 250th birthday, a photographer finds unity in tarnished state quarters

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Ahead of America’s 250th birthday, a photographer finds unity in tarnished state quarters

“E Pluribus Unum,” or “Out of many, one.”

That phrase, engraved on some quarters photographer Blaise Hayward was counting in his New York City kitchen in July 2023, intrigued him. They were marks of the 50 State Quarters, a series of coins issued by the U.S. Mint from 1999 to 2008 for which each coin featured a symbol representing one of the 50 states.

With Hayward’s growing concern about the vitriolic condition of American politics, the phrase felt resonant.

Blaise Hayward looks over printed works of his “Quarters of Confederation” series, highlighting Canadian coins.

(Blake Ogden)

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That moment sparked his photo series, “America ~ The Statehood Quarters,” and sent him on a quest to the bank to find every coin. Now a collection of 50 images, one for each state’s quarter, the series explores American unity, shared history and constant exchange.

“My goal was to gather these coins and present them in a cohesive, inclusive manner. Every state is represented,” Hayward said. “Everybody’s equal. It’s about equality, representation.”

Those interested can find his photos on his website, where he sells editioned images of the coins, ranging from $1,200 to $5,000.

Ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary on Saturday, Hayward reflects on the series and its relevance today.

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Your photographs remind me of portraits. As large close-ups, each quarter has a unique character. Tell me about your approach to capturing them.

I started my career in the 1980s, and I was an analog photographer. I was late to digital. These are all captured digitally, as is most of my work now, but the most important aspect to my work is that it has an analog feel to it.

My goal was to present it as realistically and honestly as possible. I photographed them as they are, and I also do that with my portraiture. I’m a portrait photographer at heart, and portraiture is my first love. But I’ve found with my fine art career that unless they’re famous people, people aren’t drawn to buying portraits and hanging them in their house. But they are drawn to still life, so a lot of my artwork now is centered on still life. My portrait background probably played a subconscious role in how I presented the quarters.

The California state quarter.

The California state quarter.

(Blaise Hayward)

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In your photographs, the quarters are old and tarnished, not shiny and new. Why?

That was important to me. If you go onto Wikipedia and type in “Statehood Quarters,” they photographed all 50 of them. They’re bright, shiny, right out of the Mint. I made a conscious decision to photograph them in circulation. I wanted them to emulate the hands they’ve passed through and illustrate the history of the country and the state.

How do you think about the people who held these quarters in relation to the project as a whole?

I think it tells the story of commerce and the story of exchange. I imagine there are a couple in there where people saved up some quarters and bought something personal. Some of these quarters could’ve been collected by children, and then they could’ve gone out and bought their first candy bar. Or they could’ve put the quarters in the soda fountain machine and got a Coca-Cola and been so excited.

I’m very attached to coins and bills. I see the artistry in it. It’s unfortunate that we’re going toward a society where we won’t have that tactile feeling anymore. There’s a difference between holding a handful of money and paying for a good than pulling your phone out and tapping.

The Delaware state quarter.

The Delaware state quarter.

(Blaise Hayward)

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You’re originally from Toronto, and have lived in New York for the last 30 years. How has living in the U.S. as an immigrant shaped the way you perceive America and represent it in this series?

It allows me to be an outsider looking in. I love the fact that I’m Canadian. It’s a badge of honor for me. It allows me to have a more sympathetic, wider and different understanding of what it’s like to live in the States.

With the “Statehood Quarters,” I don’t know if it influenced me when I photographed the project. I was just in awe of the history. If you start reading about the States and how the whole country came together, all of the people that made that journey were immigrants. Unless you’re Native American, we’re all immigrants here. I thought about that a couple of times because I was reading about the people that started it all.

Your series centers unity in a time of extreme divisiveness in American politics, whether it’s surrounding the federal crackdown on immigration or LGBTQ+ rights, among other issues. What does “unity” look like to you in this context? What do you feel Americans should be united on?

Americans could stand to be united on what a great country this is, even though at this present moment it’s not feeling like that for everybody. America is a great country. It’s been a beacon of democracy since its founding, and countries all over the world have held it in such high esteem.

Without giving away my political leanings — I don’t even mean to go there — sadly, in this present moment, I don’t think the country is showing its best self. We could stand to take a step back and reflect on the history and unity of the country. We could stand some compassion. We could stand some understanding. We could stand to be better listeners.

We don’t always have to agree. It’s just vitriol out there. It’s tearing the country apart. I think it will be a collective effort on both sides of the aisle for us to come together and dial the heat down.

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I’m hoping that on this 250th anniversary, people put their political leanings aside and celebrate America. It’s got so much potential to be that beacon again, that leader in the world. At the end of the day, why can’t we just embrace “E Pluribus Unum”? Out of many, we are one. We are one nation.

For many people, America’s 250th anniversary will be a time of celebration and patriotism. For many others, it will be a time of criticism and protest. How do you feel your series engages each of these attitudes?

I hope that people look at the series and look at the country in a broader stroke, and say, “Wow. What an amazing collection. This ‘Statehood Quarters’ collection is so inclusive and symbolic of this great nation. Look at all these beautiful coins from these beautiful states.”

Kansas is one of my favorite coins. I’ve never been to Kansas, but the coin in the collection made me appreciate the state. It has gotten me thinking I’d like to visit every state and meet the people and have a meal and see what they’re like and see the landscape. I hope this collection inspires people to celebrate the country as a whole rather than looking at it state to state.

The Kansas Statehood Quarter.

The Kansas Statehood Quarter.

(Blaise Hayward)

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What does it mean to “celebrate the country”?

I’m an outdoor person and a nature person. For me, it means celebrating the land, and with that, celebrating the people in that land.

I was listening to somebody on the radio who was here for the World Cup. They were from Morocco, and they said every person they’ve met in New York has been so nice.

It’s time for this country to start being nicer to each other. I hope this project helps people be a little bit more kind to each other, a little bit more tolerant, a little bit more understanding, a little bit more loving and a little bit more hospitable.

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House Democrats accuse Trump of ‘hijacking’ America’s 250th birthday for his own gain

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House Democrats accuse Trump of ‘hijacking’ America’s 250th birthday for his own gain

President Trump speaks at a rally kicking off the Great American State Fair last week, part of the anniversary celebrations organized by White House-backed group Freedom 250.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images


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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

As America’s birthday celebrations kick into high gear, so too do criticisms of the preeminent national group organizing them, Freedom 250.

Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee published a 55-page report Thursday accusing the group of aiding President Trump in turning America’s milestone into a “hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment” through tactics that potentially amount to criminal fraud.

It’s titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People out of their 250th Birthday.”

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Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told NPR that the report was months in the making. It is based on interviews with unnamed whistleblowers, sworn Congressional testimony, internal Freedom 250 documents and other written responses.

“We put it all together to really tell the story … of how Donald Trump hijacked what should have been a unifying national celebration and repurposed it for his own interests,” Huffman said in a Zoom interview. “This was a team of operatives using the Freedom 250 shell company, but it was also Donald Trump himself telling them what to do.”

The White House referred a request for comment to Freedom 250, though Freedom 250 told NPR that it does not speak for the White House.

Freedom 250 is the public-private partnership behind some of the summer’s most high-profile anniversary events, including a UFC fight outside the White House in June, a controversial state fair on the National Mall, a July Fourth fireworks show opening with a Trump rally, and the “Patriot Games,” a high school athletic competition scheduled for August.

It was created via executive order last year, and describes itself as “the national, non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday.” But it’s not the only one: Congress had created a nonpartisan commission called America250 for this same purpose in 2016.

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