In the world of journalism, writers are sometimes typecast. It’s not uncommon to hear things like, He’s into lyrical essay writing. Or, She likes the hard-hitting political stuff. Or, They love reporting on the food and beverage industry. And, maybe in opposition to how it works for the Hollywood set, this is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, at 5280, we find that when we can pair writers with topics that intrigue them, the stories are almost always the better for it.

Editorial director Geoff Van Dyke typically spends his days planning 5280’s Behind the Stories podcast, editing long-form narratives and feature packages, and helping me manage the daily operations of a monthly magazine. He doesn’t often get the chance to write his own pieces, but when a fellow staffer suggested he look into Vinyl Me, Please, a record-of-the-month club that has plans to open a record pressing plant in RiNo this year, his writerly curiosity was piqued. This was not a surprise: During the pandemic, Van Dyke picked up a vinyl habit, one that regu- larly sends him to Wax Trax Records, Angelo’s CDs & More, and Twist & Shout to thumb through the bins. When he finds a record he likes—by A Tribe Called Quest or Massive Attack or Bon Iver or the Smashing Pumpkins—he takes it home to his turntable, which he says provides an ex- perience that streaming services simply can’t. “There’s just that tactile, intimate feeling of playing records,” Van Dyke says. “Honestly, it sounds kinda corny, but every time I drop the needle on an LP and get that little whoosh of sound before the music starts play- ing, I get butterflies in my stomach.”

5280 April 2023
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The folks at Vinyl Me, Please, which has been in Colorado since around 2014, concur. But Van Dyke’s “Inside Denver’s New Vinyl Record Pressing Plant” isn’t a self-indulgent treatise on why vinyl trumps digital. (Although, news flash: It does.) Instead, it’s a trend piece, a business profile, and a cultural examination all rolled into one, penned by a writer who really cares about the subject matter.