PAT WALKER ON OPENING SWOON
In a little office in the Central Chambers, sitting peacefully above the back and forth of Crown St Mall, is Pat Walker’s new shop Swoon—a second hand vinyl and book shop with plans for doing much more than just that. Pat’s space is for those of us in Wollongong who are tired of spending all their time fruitlessly browsing the op shop shelves, or think they might be finding the shelves of Music Farmers all too familiar.
I visited Pat recently at his new shop and asked him all about Swoon, what inspired him to open the store, about his shared creative space Studio World, the gaps in Wollongong’s music and creative scenes, and the community he serves by doing it all… Thanks to Pat for his time with this interview and for stocking some of my old books on his shelves. Swoon is located at 17/157 Crown St, Wollongong NSW 2500. Upstairs in the Central Chambers (where Quay Kitchen was..)
Pat! First week of Swoon, how's it been going?
It’s been very quiet so far actually. Before I went overseas, I tried my best just to get the store functioning, and now I’m trying to take care of all the extra stuff, and focus on the finer details. We’re getting a sign for the front door and an A-Frame for down on the street. Then a wooden stamp with our logo.
Yes, I love the logo, the swan.
It’s cute isn't it? That was Phoebe (@rat.bag.ds), she did her job well..
What inspired you to start Swoon?
It sort of came out of nowhere. I was sitting at the cafe across the road with a friend and we were talking about how doing something like this—a small, music and book, event type space—would be cool. So I started looking for commercial real estate and found this spot in the arcade. Usually, when you have this sort of idea, you look into it and find it’s not feasible.. “That’d be a cool thing to do if you had the money to put into it”.. But it ended up being very feasible and affordable, so I just went for it and didn’t really put much thought into it. It was a thought bubble that quickly became a reality.
I know you’re doing this all very DIY, you’ve got some close friends and yourself running it, is there an ideal aim for Swoon?
Well, the core business is as a record and book store. I wanna try and establish that—to get to the point where we’re covering expenses, making rent every month. But otherwise, I have an open mind in terms of what the space can be used for. I’d like to do small gigs, art exhibitions, poetry recitals, film screenings. I’m pretty keen on people coming to me and suggesting something, seeing what works. I guess there’ll be a period of experimenting, trying out as many things as possible and seeing what sticks, what attracts people, what demand there is.
This is a very new project, done almost on a whim, but you do have some experience with running a space like this with Studio World. How did that come about? In kind of the same way?
Yeah, in a similarly unexpected way actually… The studio was previously run by some other people under Echo and Salt. I went in one night to practice with my band Solid Effort, and the owner Tim was there and he mentioned that he was trying to find somebody to take over the space and pretty much on the spot, we were like, ‘yeah definitely we’ll do that’.
Nick (Santoro) is in that band too, right?
Yep, Nick and Tom, who helps out with this store now. So, that was something we weren’t looking for that sort of fell into our laps and we thought we’d be silly not to take the opportunity. So we did…
I think Studio World and its rehearsal space is a diamond in Wollongong. There's not really another space for local bands to practice here.. plus, the gear is good.. its not a place I fret about practicing at.
In general, when I'm doing something I like to do it well. So, I try to keep things up to a certain standard and if I feel passionate about it, which I do with the studio and with the shop, I'll be motivated to keep on improving it and making it better and better. I'm not running them strictly as a business with a cynical motive just to make money. I want it to be something which serves the purposes of the community.
With the studio, because it's something which is so in demand and we're booked out quite a lot. We could charge a lot more than we do, but I like to keep it affordable so that regular, younger bands are able to use the space. It feels accessible to everyone. I would really like to do more recording sessions at the studio, and that's one of the big motivators for improving the sound quality. I take that same attitude with the shop. I'd like to try and do as much as I can with it.
Do you see Swoon in the same way, as something that Wollongong didn't really have until now?
Yeah, I think it's filling a sort of niche. You know, in terms of record stores, there's really only Music Farmers, which tends to cast a wide net in terms of its selection. It's for everyone. And they do have a really good selection there. But I think there's room for a store like this, which is a little bit more focused and is able to serve people who are more interested in niche things, perhaps.
But, I think if we manage to make some shows happen here... then it could fill that niche as well because there's a gap in Wollongong for venues on the smaller scale. We have Society City, for instance. La La La's, Dicey Riley's, I would say are mid-range right? They have international and national touring bands, but smaller local bands as well. So there is room for something like this, which is more DIY and smaller scale shows for emerging artists.
One place that suits that smaller audience, kind of low stakes, gig environment would be Frank’s, which is far away from Central Wollongong.
Yeah, Thirroul and Wollongong are totally different scenes, there seems to be very little overlap between them.
I would say that Van Q is good too. For younger and DIY bands to just put on a show but it’s still more suited for a band, rather than what I imagine I’d see here…
Yeah, VanQ is quite a big room, actually. It's a good sounding room. I was surprised when I went to shows there, it’s better than some music venues I’d say.
I’d also say as an avid reader, there's almost no secondhand bookshops in Wollongong, too. We mentioned Society City and there’s a multitude of op shops around here. But again, like Music Farmers, it’s a much wider net. Are the records and the gigs more of a focus for you, and the books are sort of there too?
For me, their equal priorities, really. But you're right about that. That's perhaps even a bigger gap in the market than the records are. I know that when I'm in Wollongong and want to buy books, I feel like my only option is the op shops, particularly the Lifeline, which I find is great.
I agree.
You kind of have to love the grind though, you really have to find joy in digging to find those one or two diamonds in the rough. There's not a place you can go in Wollongong to find a real curated selection of books to choose from. That's the kind of thing I want to offer here, too. I don’t want to be a glorified op shop where we have heaps of donations and we're putting it all out. I'd like to keep the stock slimmer, but know that it's a really solid selection of stuff.
When you came up with the idea for the shop, you started looking and found this space very quickly?
Yeah, there were several properties that were available in this Central Chambers part of Crown Street. For the location, they were surprisingly cheap. From the few people that I've met, it seems to be a pretty quietly thriving community. All the people here are very nice. It seems like a little pocket in the city where all sorts of things can find their place. There's a retro video game arcade just around the corner, there's an acupuncture osteopathy dry needling clinic there, there's an old jeweller next door. Rewind Film Lab is downstairs. There's an eclectic mix of different businesses here, and I think it's really cool. It's a good spot to be. Unfortunately, it doesn't get traffic through here. Generally, people tend to come in here when they are going somewhere else, they don't tend to wander in here. I think that's a problem we'll face and we'll need to come up with ways of getting people in here. Doing different promo stuff and putting on events that people will go out of their way for, just to build awareness and to get people more involved. Not just for promotion's sake. It's one of the main things I want to use the space for.
Anything in particular you have in mind?
I'd like to try gigs. The first thing I'm going to try and make happen is a more official opening event. When we opened a few weeks ago, we had our first evening here. I just did a post on Instagram and invited whoever of my friends wanted to come, but sometime towards the end of February, I wanna get a few solo artists to perform and maybe have a few other activities as a official launch.
Do you see this as a sustainable venture? Do you hope to do this for quite a while? Because I know you're a music teacher as well.
I would love to stop teaching. I'm doing three days a week at the moment, teaching music at a high school. It would be great if I were able to do these two things, the store and the studio, and have that support me. At this point, I don't really make any income from the studio as such. We're going to lose the lease there mid next year, so we're going to have to move to a different location. They're demolishing the building to build an apartment block there, predictably ahah, but we knew that going in… I'm saving money so that when it comes time to find somewhere new, we can afford it and can set it up and make it a bit more to a recording studio standard. What we have right now is like a modified rehearsal studio, there's only so much we can do to make it sound good. When we move, we'll be able to do everything properly, put a bit of money into it. To answer your question, I would love for this to be a sustainable thing, but it really depends on whether there's demand for it.
You know, retail is a bit risky these days, especially shopfront retail. A lot of things are moving online, there’s a cost of living crisis, people don't have as much disposable income. But, I think that puts a focus on not just selling products, but making a space which serves other needs and different functions in the community, depending on what people want to use it for.
Film screenings is another one that I mentioned before that I'm particularly excited to do because just as Wollongong doesn't have any good book shops, Wollongong also does not have a cinema. I mean, the Gala cinema in Warrawong is great, it’s one of my favourite spots around here. It's one of the few places I feel hasn't changed a single bit since I was like five years old.
Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, $10 tickets..
Exactly.. Last year, some friends and I went up to The Ritz in Randwick, where they did a retrospective of Tarkovsky and showed all seven of his films over seven weeks, and I thought that was really sick. If there's a demand for something like that, then that would be a really cool thing to do. Maybe double features, get two movies that pair well together and show them. Or have people vote online, even. Like, I know what appeals to me, I know what I would like to see happen. But ultimately the shop has to be run in a way that appeals to people, meets their demands and their interests.
There is a very vibrant, thriving creative community here. I think lots of people would really appreciate something like this, a little bit different, something closer to the essence of the Thirroul scene in the centre of town
Yeah, I love the feeling of Frank's. It’s like going to someone's living room rather than to a venue, like the rules don't apply so much. It's not like going to a pub and feeling like you're being policed all the time or there's certain things you can’t do. You can be properly comfortable. If you want to make something happen there, you can talk to Alec and probably work something out. It feels very open and accessible. I would like to cultivate a similar vibe here.
You worked there too? Did that kind of influence you in wanting to start something of your own? To operate within that philosophy?
Actually, at the time that I was working there, Tom, Emma and myself—the three of us who are involved in running this space—were actually talking about starting a music venue in Wollongong. We were even looking at places on Crown Street, but the costs and the risks involved in doing that are just so prohibitive. Getting a liquor license, stocking up, all the organisation involved. Just way too intense and we didn't have the money to get that started. There's not any special kind of licenses you need to run a retail store and as long as you can get your hands on the stock and a POS, that's basically it… just stuff for people to buy and a way to buy it. When we were planning to do the venue, we went through the initial process of forming a business plan, thinking about all that’s involved, and that’s when we realised that we weren't up for pursuing something that demanding and hands on. It was an important experience. Having already thought through those initial stages of how to start a business gave me the confidence to do it. So when the opportunity came up, I felt I knew what was involved. Having not done it before, it seems like a very intimidating thing, trying to get something like this off the ground. But ultimately, it's not really that complicated and I would encourage anyone who had a similar sort of motivation, to make something like this happen, to just go for it, commit to it. Even if you feel like you're not a business minded person or don't understand how it works, you can figure it out along the way. Go for it. Follow your dreams..
You mentioned before about retail moving online.. Would you do an online job to go along with your retail front?
We're in the process of setting up a website now. The way I want to do it is that we'll have all our stock listed on the website, and people are able to reserve it. They fill out a contact form on the website, we'll put it aside for them and they can come here and collect it. But having a physical space like this, I want to prioritise it being a physical space, I don't want to go too much online, but I guess we'll see. If it turns out we need to start regularly shipping stuff out to people in order to sustain business, then we'll do that. But yeah, I want to put an emphasis on the physical side.
Like retail, almost all of our media is online now as well. Have you noticed our generation, or maybe younger generations, returning to physical, tangible media and wanting to buy vinyl, CDs and books?
Yeah, I think so. There's enough people out there doing magazines, zines, and little publications. The majority of musicians I know, if they have the resources to do it, will get their stuff pressed to vinyl or CDs, or even tapes, some kind of physical format.
Vinyl is very expensive, but it’s a really nice thing to own. I think sitting down with a record is a nice experience to have when so much of our music listening is now passive, just on the go or when we're working. When we have unlimited access to all of the music ever recorded, It's good to limit yourself and say, I'm listening to this one thing and I’ll devote my attention to it. I think people appreciate that experience.
Similarly, I find with physical books, I'm able to actually hone in on it more than I would otherwise. When I'm reading a book, I'm really taking it in, I'm properly absorbing it. But, when I'm reading anything on my phone or a computer, I automatically go into scanning mode. I'm sort of... skimming it. I think for most people, that's their default way of interacting with these different media. So even if you're reading a book on a device, you're automatically going to go into that device interaction mode and you're not going to take it in as much as you might with a physical book.
I've also found it's nice to just buy things when you come across them. I do this with books and CDs mostly. I go to op shops and I find something that I probably wouldn't have found on the internet, but I see the cover and it strikes me. I think ‘I'll buy this, I’ll give it a go”. It might sit there for a while, in my car or on my bedroom floor, but eventually, I'll pick it up, and I’ve found some albums and books that I ended up really loving just by having come across the physical object. There isn't the same sense of discovery on the internet. It's much more likely that you find things by going out looking for them rather than coming across them..