Why Two Del Ray Record Stores Share Mount Vernon Avenue

"Obviously we think that having more record stores is a great thing," Michael Babin told ALXnow in July. "It makes the whole neighborhood, and certainly those two blocks of Mount Vernon Avenue a heck of a destination for anybody who cares about music and vinyl records."

Babin is a principal at Neighborhood Restaurant Group. When he said it, his company was about to close Mulberry Lane Play Café on Mount Vernon Avenue and replace it with a record store, one block from a record store that already had a following. Ordinary retail logic would read that as a turf fight. In Del Ray it went the other way. The new shop's backers and the established shop's owner treated a second store as a way to bring more people to the street. The same small-is-better thinking shows up in the taproom that opened a few doors down, and you can see it on this fall's Del Ray calendar.

The phone call before the opening

Here's the timeline. Earlier this year, Crooked Beat Records closed its basement shop at 2417 Mount Vernon Avenue and went looking for a new home on the Avenue. When owner Bill Daly announced his new address, Babin got in touch. "I reached out to him immediately," Babin told ALXnow. "He said the more the merrier, and it'll only make it more of a destination, which is exactly what we thought."

NRG's help went beyond goodwill. Babin and Nathan Anda, NRG's culinary director, are longtime Crooked Beat customers, and they put Daly in touch with WeMakeDC, a partner of theirs with a new store on Connecticut Avenue. So the people opening the "competing" shop had already been helping the incumbent before either store opened.

The new shop got a name in August. NRG didn't build it from scratch. It's a second location of Mobius Records, which owner Dempsey Hamilton has run on Main Street in Fairfax City since 2014. Hamilton's partners in Del Ray are Babin, Evening Star Café chef Nathan Anda and NRG beverage director Greg Engert. The Alexandria Brief reported that the partnership grew out of more than a decade of joint projects, including an annual Record Store Day beer and pop-up appearances at NRG's Snallygaster festival. If you've ever browsed the original shop on Main Street, the Del Ray version is the same operator on a new block. Our Fairfax neighborhood page covers that side of the partnership.

Mobius opened at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue on Saturday, Sept. 12. Crooked Beat reopened across the street at 2101B Mount Vernon Avenue on Friday, Sept. 25, less than two weeks later.

Two shops, two different afternoons

Having both shops on the street only pays off if they offer different things. From what each has published, they do.

Two caveats on the hours. The Mobius hours above are from opening weekend, and I couldn't find a published regular schedule for the Del Ray store. Crooked Beat's website says it's "back on the Avenue" but still calls its weekly schedule soft-open hours. In September, Daly told ALXnow he expected full-time hours "in about a week or so." Until that changes, Thursday and Friday afternoons are short at Crooked Beat, and a weekend afternoon is the easiest way to visit both shops in one trip.

Mobius also opened with a sizable used-vinyl backstory. Babin told ALXnow that he and Anda own about 5,000 records between them, and the plan was always to sell a mix of new and used.

Why small spaces make the cluster possible

What made this work is how small the spaces are on this stretch of the Avenue.

Crooked Beat's new home is a two-story townhouse with 950 square feet, and neighbors told ALXnow it had sat vacant for more than a decade. Mobius took over a space that was already in use. NRG closed Mulberry Lane Play Café at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue on July 10 to make room for the record store. The co-working office upstairs and the attached Shorty's Deluxe sandwich shop stayed open. So the second record store didn't take a big storefront. It took one piece of a building that's still serving lunch.

Crooked Run Fermentation's new taproom at 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue was built on the same scale, and on purpose. "We were looking for locations under 1,000 square feet and this spot came up," co-owner Lee Rogan told ALXnow in August. The spot is the former Dolce & Bean chocolate shop, which closed in spring 2025. It now seats more than 20 inside and eight outside. The menu is Crooked Run's beers, plus wine, cocktails, chicken tenders, pita with hummus, and mozzarella sticks. Crooked Run's Del Ray page lists the address as 2003a, publishes service hours and calls it the company's newest location.

Rogan described his plans in terms close to Babin's. He wants the taproom to be family friendly, with stroller parking in a nearby alley. "We're not trying to come in and be 'the place' in Del Ray," he said. "Because that's not what Del Ray is all about. It's about little places that people can go to and shop in and enjoy, just a local neighborhood spot."

Count the addresses and you have a 950-square-foot record shop at 2101B, a record shop sharing its building with a sandwich counter at 2016, and a taproom under 1,000 square feet at 2003. Spaces that small can't hold one big anchor store, so the street fills up with several specialty shops a short walk apart. That's what makes Babin's "destination" possible.

Where the vinyl block shows up on the fall calendar

The record shops were also meant to plug into what was already happening on the Avenue. The Mobius partners planned DJ nights and live performances at Evening Star, plus Record Store Day festivities in the Hi/Fi Tex-Mex courtyard. Combine that with the Del Ray Business Association's listings on Visit Del Ray and you get the next eight weeks on the strip:

1. Now through mid-October: The new Colasanto Interactive Fountain at 2700 Mount Vernon Avenue opened Sept. 10. The city says it runs only until mid-October, so about a week of its first season is left.
2. Saturday, Oct. 10: The Del Ray Farmers' Market at Pat Miller Neighborhood Square, plus the Del Ray Vintage & Flea Market and the Gustave Art & Craft Market. It's the busiest Saturday of the month to pair with a record dig.
3. Saturdays, Oct. 17, 24 and 31: The farmers' market continues each week.
4. Sunday, Oct. 25, 2 p.m.: The 30th Annual Del Ray Halloween Parade runs along Mount Vernon Avenue, starting at E. Bellefonte Avenue. A Halloween Parade Kids Zone is the same day.
5. Saturday, Oct. 31: The Trail of Dreadful Delights at select Del Ray restaurants, alongside that morning's farmers' market.
6. Saturdays, Nov. 7, 14, 21 and 28: More farmers' market dates. The flea market and Gustave market come back on Nov. 14.
7. Friday, Nov. 27: Mobius advertises RSD Black Friday, with doors at 10 a.m. The page doesn't say whether that's the Fairfax City store, the Del Ray store or both, so check closer to the date.

Black Friday will be the first real test of the two-shop idea. It's a release day built for crowds, landing on a street that now has two record counters facing each other and a taproom a block south.

For the wider Alexandria picture beyond Del Ray, our Alexandria neighborhood page keeps the bigger map.

If you're a Del Ray owner and these new storefronts have you wondering how small shops nearby factor into your home's value, Coral Gundlach is happy to talk it through over coffee, or between record bins on a Saturday. Book a Consultation and bring your questions about your block.