Blink and you’ll miss it. Tucked away on Moabit’s tiny, unassuming Kruppstraße (a strange choice to bear the name of the German industrial giant), Schallplatten Antiquariat Streif only opens its doors one day per week.
But inside you’ll find a surprisingly diverse range of antique music players and records housed in what feels like an old-timey magic shop. But this is no packrat’s depository: everything is carefully selected and impeccably organized.
You can find old-fashioned curiosities like glass radio transmission tubes once used aboard ships, now repurposed into amplifiers by determined modern-day audio-navigators.
Wind-up wooden gramophones from the 1920s and Schellackplatten (78rpm records) are available alongside vinyl record players and LPs you’d find in more conventional record stores – from jazz and swing to krautrock and new wave.
If you’re lucky, proprietor Stefan Streif just might put on his oldest record while you’re there: 112-year-old dancehall ditties from Sidney Jones. A treasure trove of rarities, the shop is equally suited for the music historian, DJ, steampunk, antiques fetishist and general music lover alike.
