Remembering Reptilian Records

Remembering Reptilian Records
Fell's Point, Baltimore, 1990s

As I get older, I find myself thinking back to those days, over 30 years ago, when I was a graduate student living in Baltimore. I didn't have much money, so I was on the lookout for cheap thrills. And a good place to find them was a dark and anarchistic little boutique in the city's Fell's Point neighborhood: Reptilian Records. 

Back then, Baltimore was known as 'Charm City', as well as 'The City that Reads', the latter slogan dreamed up by a tourism and marketing campaign (the slogan quickly was transformed into 'The City that Breeds' by knowledgeable Baltimoreans and urban hipsters). The city was comparatively safer than it is nowadays, although you took care in where you went after dark.

There still were working-class redoubts in the northern and eastern parts of the city, in neighborhoods like Highlandtown, Hampden, Roland Park, Keswick, and Dundalk, while in the downtown area, the Inner Harbor remained a major tourist draw. Some of the best pizza in the city could be had at Matthew's, on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown.

Reptilian opened in November, 1989, at 403 South Broadway Street and quickly became the 'in' place to go for vinyl, and later CDs, in the genres of punk, thrash metal, speed metal, and the burgeoning grunge rock movement. Since I was 31 when I began patronizing Reptilian late in 1991, I was a little too old and set in my ways to have much interest in bands like Fugazi. 

But along with records, Reptilian also sold the more offbeat comic books, graphic novels, magazines, and the occasional book. You could find the latest issue of comics from Dark Horse, Eclipse, Tundra, Kitchen Sink, and other indie publishers, along with higher-end publications like 'Raw'. They had boxes stuffed with ultraviolent, 'transgressive' black-and-white horror comics from quasi-underground publishers like Northstar.

I have fond memories of visiting Reptilian on gray, drizzly, cold days, or in searingly hot summer days, and coming away with 'Aliens' comics from Dark Horse, 'Black Hole' and 'Death Rattle' from Kitchen Sink, a copy of 'Taboo', Robert Crumb's 'Hup' comics, and much other worthy material that now is stored in boxes in my basement.

Back in the early 1990s, Fell's Point was gentrifying, but slowly, and the profuse commercialization that now marks the area didn't exist. There still was a seedy ambience to the neighborhood, and back then, crime wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is nowadays. So I could park my car on side streets and not risk having it broken in to, or being mugged walking around Fell's Point.

When I came away from Reptilian with several packs of the infamous 'True Crime' trading cards, issued in late 1992 by comics publisher Eclipse, it seemed right and proper that I acquired them in Fell's Point, and not in some more presentable, upscale vending place.......

I patronized Reptilian until I left Baltimore early in 1997. The store eventually left its Fell's Point location for a storefront on North Howard Street, and closed for good in January 2009. The store's somewhat eccentric owner, 'Chris X', aka Chris Neu, converted his operation to a mail order / online vendor. Reptilian continues to this day as a producer and publisher of punk rock as custom vinyl LPs, and CDs. Their Facebook page is here. 

I'd buy a Reptilian Records tee shirt, but the days when I could wear a XXL size comfortably are long gone............sigh.......

I guess the message is, treasure those offbeat, crowded, dimly lit, overly loud little stores and vendors who are dedicated to the fringes of popular culture, because they are places you really will miss when they close.