

Not nearly this civilized.

Academy Records Annex made the move to Greenpoint several months ago at this point, but apparently the new tenants in their old Williamsburg location are just now getting around to tossing out some of the records the store left behind. Hence, yesterday’s (highly controversial) Dumpster Full of Records.

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Gothamist first reported the mess on North 6th yesterday, and pretty soon the places with crawling with collectors who sifted through the piles until pretty soon after that, when cleaning crews showed up and got into a scuffle with the crate dumpster diggers, even threatening to call the cops. A photographer on the scene explained as follows:

“A minute or two after I got there, a guy from the dumpster company started yelling for the collector to get out of the dumpster. The collector refused, eventually suggesting that the guy call the cops if he needs him out. The guy from the dumpster company jumped into the dumpster and got up in the collector’s face, about to start a fight. As it was about to get physical, someone else from his team came running out and got both guys out of the dumpster.”

Academy then tweeted that the records in question were “the lousy records we left behind 5 months ago when we moved out.” The store’s owner has since clarified the situation, saying, “I know people get really excited when they see a dumpster full of records, but these are just the ones that weren’t worth schlepping to our new spot. There are undoubtedly some decent records in there somewhere, but it would probably take a lot of work to find them!”

He also noted that it’s not actually possible to recycle records anymore, so it looks like that’s that. If any of the truly hardcore among you feel like heading to the landfill to scope out the remainders, keep us posted. We’d understand if that’s not how you end up spending your weekend, but still.

Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.