When we came up with the idea to write a blog on record shops, there was no question about which one we would feature first. Island Vintage is a particularly special store for us, as not only is it the closest store to us, (about three minutes away from the front door), but it is also owned by Howard’s dad, Gary.

Since its opening in 2014, Island Vintage has become, in a way, an island of its own in Ramsgate. It’s not unusual to stop by and see friends, family and customers alike, quite simply, hanging out. It’s also not unusual to be walking up the road listening to Gary’s latest finds drifting out from the shop into the street. If you want to listen to a record, it’ll be played loud and proud on Gary’s Sony APM speakers that are so, very good, that passers by stick their head in just to ask him about them.

One of the things that makes Island Vintage so special has got to be Gary himself. Family ties aside, this is a man who has quite literally, heard it all. Having owned record stores since 1981, there really isn’t anything he doesn’t know. As well as this, he can quite easily talk to you about artists, bands and their history, play their entire backlist for you for as long as you want, and you probably wouldn’t even know that he himself isn’t a fan of them. With Gary, it’s all about the person and the sound.

Though we’ve taken a lot of photos to show you what the place looks like, we thought it would be best to maybe try and describe to you that afternoon, so you could get more of a feel for it. We’ll be uploading our filmed feature of the shop very soon to our YouTube channel, so you’ll be able to see the shop properly, and watch a special interview with Gary himself.

We stopped by late in the afternoon; when the shop would be less busy, to take our photos. Because Howard knows Island Vintage so well, and has been working in his dad’s stores since he was young, Gary left the shop in his care whilst he went to Broadstairs to pick up some more vinyl. We spent a good half an hour taking photos and digging through the racks. If you imagine an antiques market stall, a disco and a record shop, you’ll have a good enough idea of Island Vintage. For a small shop, it really does feel endless, bottomless – there is so much to look at it, so much hiding in corners or underneath a stack of records, you worry you won’t be able to see it all.

The walls are buried beneath records that reach from the racks to the ceiling. On the left hand side you’ll find your Soul, Funk, Disco and Jazz, with Rock and Pop on the right. There’s more in the boxes beneath, full of more vinyl, vintage comics for only £1 and 45s. The majority of 45s, however, can be found on an island in the middle of the store, the packaging all curled and leafy, next to CDs that have been ordered in a mesmerizing pattern that you find yourself staring at for quite a long time.

A man comes in and asks about the Bose speakers, apparently a lot of people have been enquiring about them recently. Howard asks him what he’d like to listen to, they go for Talking Heads and David Bowie, and within seconds the shop is filled with sound. Colour plays a very important part in Island Vintage. It is everywhere, in the cover art, the movie posters on the walls and along the till, but it is in the atmosphere as well, in the sound that comes from the speakers – a musical kind of colour. People experience music in such a diverse way, but the feel you get from Island Vintage when you walk in and swivel your head left to right is in a way musical, colourful, full of sound whether there’s a record playing or not.

When Gary returns, armed with ten cases of vinyl, Ziggy Stardust blaring from the speakers, he stacks them one after the other on the floor, and both him and Howard immediately begin rifling through them. Watching the two of them together, the immediacy in which they pick out records and state what they are before even looking at each one is almost frightening. Gary makes various piles on top of the 45s, he tells us how much each one is worth with a very precise snappiness. No research needed.

After Bowie plays out, Gary puts on a very special item that he has recently found, a never-before-sold flexi of an Allen Ginsberg reading. You can hear people coughing, muttering and sniffing in the background, Ginsberg’s voice whirling round and round the room. Gary found out Olivia liked the Beats a few months ago and clearly hasn’t forgotten. He is the kind of man who will remember what you like and never forget it.

The shop itself used to be more general, full of ceramics, plates and glassware, you can Google it and find quite a different-looking store from the one it is now. Gary still has little knick-knacks around the shop, in fact, we stumbled across a box of odds and ends next to the till – the most interesting items being a flaky, beaten up stove kettle and a glass swan. These little treasures found dotted about the place compliment the additional vintage film posters framed on spare scraps of wall, that and the Russian propaganda leaning up against the male and female Pop Vocalist section. There are a few books here and there as well, tucked away in the corner that you have to lean across the racks to get to, and in the window and behind the till. A lot of them are on Jazz: Jazz Panorama, Jazz and the White American, Essays on Jazz, but the Keith Richards, John Peel and Freddie Mercury are all laid out on display with the Hi-Fi at the front of the store. A stack of film magazines lie waiting on top of an amp, old cameras line the shelves behind the till.

From Doctor Who audio CDs, to a Jennings Univox J6, Island Vintage is somewhere you can quite literally get lost in, if you’ll excuse the cliché. It’s quite like going into your grandparents attic, in which you rifle through box after box of all this cool stuff, and end up spending five and a half hours up there in the dust, a huge smile on your face. Sometimes you can go into record stores and get a weird vibe, maybe you feel self-conscious in front of the staff, too shy to ask for help, sometimes you’re worried you might not have the same knowledge as them and you don’t want to look stupid. But this isn’t that kind of place. It’s a shop to be nobody in. So, if you’re ever Ramsgate way and looking for a chilled out afternoon in a funky, friendly store, stop by.