Best of Sacramento 2016: Shopping & Services

When a devoted record collector with an ear for ’60s garage rock and psych music met a graphic designer with a sharp eye for antiques and vintage home décor, the two seemed destined to eventually open a store.

In May 2015, that’s just what Tim and Laura Matranga did with Kicksville Vinyl & Vintage, located in the WAL Public Market on R Street.

“It’s funny—I first met her at an antique fair through friends, and then we started hanging out and we both found we had a love for records and vintage stuff,” Tim says. “The opportunity to open a shop came up and we said, ’Let’s do this. We’re all in.’”

What started out as a hobby of digging through garage and estate sales for records and unique vintage items on the weekends took a serious turn when Tim’s friend Marty DeAnda, owner of MediumRare Records & Collectibles, invited the couple to split the 1,000 square-foot store space with him.

Tim and Laura’s side of the store welcomes vinyl- and vintage-seeking customers with an eye-catching window display that rotates every few months. Its current exhibit is a scene straight out of a ’70s-era living room, and of course, it’s paired with records. The Orange Creamsicle-colored walls mark the Kicksville territory of the business, where everything from ’60s Italian ceramic canisters to kitschy owls, cats and Danish figurines pepper the aisles.

“Everything’s unique and every item has a story behind it,” Laura says of her love for vintage hunting. “It’s kind of like you almost have to work to find it, so it makes it more of a treasure when you find this piece that you’ve been searching for.”

Tim’s adoration for wax started at 14, when he would spend his paper route earnings to buy Top 40 records. Eventually, he moved onto the alternative, punk and garage-rock genres. His record collection, a combination of 45s and LPs, totals about 8,000. Nowadays, instead of buying one or two records, Tim’s on the hunt for entire collections, and he credits the vinyl revival and also the steady flow of millennials that visit his store and share a passion for records.

“I would say classic rock, jazz and soul are the genres we sell often. If we had a copy to sell of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue every week, we would sell one every week,” Tim says. “Soul’s really big, too—everything from Sam Cooke to Otis Redding. It’s hard to keep ’em in stock.”