Peekskill's Paramount Theater Opened a Record Shop in Its Lobby

Okay, this is one of my favorite finds in a while. If you have been to a show at the Paramount in downtown Peekskill lately and noticed a table of records set up near the restrooms, that is not some random pop-up. It is Paramount Vinyl Vault, a volunteer-run record shop operating right inside the theater, and it exists for one very good reason: turning the records nobody is listening to anymore into money that keeps the theater running.

What It Actually Is

Paramount Vinyl Vault sells donated vinyl, CDs and books, and the crates go deeper than you would expect from a lobby table. Classic rock, jazz, country, classical, pop, metal, folk, basically whatever showed up in someone's donation box. Most albums run $2 to $20, which is exactly the price range where you can take a total gamble on something you have never heard of and not feel bad about it. It is entirely volunteer-run and sets up in the lobby before and during select shows, not regular retail hours, so catch it while there is a band playing.

Where the Money Goes

Here is the part that made me want to write this up. The Paramount is run by a nonprofit arts group, and every dollar the shop makes goes straight into it. "Every penny made from selling donated items goes back into the theater," founder Greg Jacquin told the River Journal. This is not a fundraising campaign with a fancy name or a naming-rights plaque. It is a folding table of used records quietly helping keep the lights on at a landmark theater in the middle of downtown Peekskill. I love that.

He Already Did This Once, in Tarrytown

Jacquin is not winging this. During COVID he was volunteering at Tarrytown Music Hall and had the idea to drive around all of Westchester collecting donated records, eventually gathering them from more than 50 people. Those donations turned into two fundraising record sales, and then something permanent: Marquee Records, a volunteer-run shop above the Music Hall's marquee that opened in November 2021 and is still going strong. It worked well enough that Jacquin figured the whole idea could travel north.

"I already had the blueprints needed, and we knew that the idea could work because Marquee has been wildly successful in raising money for the Tarrytown Music Hall," he told the River Journal. "Peekskill and the area north is pretty much untouched territory as far as collecting donations."

That is the quiet part worth sitting with. One guy figured out how to fund a nonprofit theater using stuff people already own and do not want anymore, and then went and did it again at a second Westchester theater.

How to Actually Help

I reached out to Greg directly, and he laid out exactly how it works. Got a box of records sitting around at home doing nothing? Email paramountvinylvault@gmail.com or call 914-739-0039 to schedule a pickup, or just drop them off whenever the Paramount box office is open. That is Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 9am to 2pm, and Thursday from 9am to 2pm and again from 3:30pm to 6pm.

"We hope that we can find a good home for those LPs gathering dust in your basement," Jacquin said.

Follow @The914Collective on Instagram for more Westchester stories like this one, and read Not Upstate Magazine coming soon too thenineonefour.com.

Jacquin's quotes about the Paramount and Tarrytown come from Alexa Schwartzberg's reporting for River Journal Online. Background on Marquee Records is drawn from Tarrytown Music Hall's own account of how the shop started. The donation details and photos above came directly from Greg himself.