TRACK NO. 02: TYPE NO. 45
// ANDREW - PLAYED AT 45 RPM //
Ask who opened the place, and every bastard’s got a different story.
Type No. 45 painted in serif, faded on the glass like it’s been through some shit. Some say it was a soldier turned poet who came home with nothin’ but a busted typewriter and a haunting he couldn't shake. Others swear it was some ink-stained typesetter who drank too much whiskey and had jazz runnin’ hot in his veins.
Andrew never gave a shit either way.
What matters is, the place opened in ‘45 and never closed.
Back then, upstairs was all typesetting, protest zines, dirty little erotica stories, and banned poetry. The shit that got you kicked outta church and invited into someone else’s bed.
They printed the stuff big houses were too scared to touch—the truth. Hell, one of the first baristas got arrested for printin’ an anti-censorship piece with no author name on it, justpressed at forty-five.
They say her ghost still hangs out in the basement.
You catch a whiff of smoke sometimes. Burned ink, too.
By the ‘60s, the basement went rogue. Bootleg vinyl press, cutting records under floorboards, ones with no labels and too much soul.
The name stamped itself into history after 1967.
Type No. 45.
Some say it’s for the year it opened, right when the war ended, grief got loud, and art poured through the cracks.
Others say it’s for the 45 rpm singles still spinnin’ somewhere in the walls.
Or the 45th rejection letter a writer taped to the brick in the basement.
Or because it’s storefront 45, pressed into the side of a block New York forgot to destroy.
Through the years, Type No. 45 became one of those joints where people came to spill their guts over blues and poetry like it broke their hearts. They sipped the espresso bitter while their cigarettes burned weary. And if you hung around late enough, you’d hear the clacking of keystrokes from the backroom. Some said it was an old busted pipe. The OGs said it was the typewriter, still writin’, still confessin’, still bleedin’ into the floorboards.
These days, the door still sticks unless you lean into it just right. The bathroom mirror’s still cracked at the corner, covered in Sharpie notes, break-up lines, lyrics the world’ll never hear.“I fucked someone I loved against this wall”carved faint in the grout.
The long-ass table hasn’t moved, initials cut deep into the wood, coffee rings, and claw marks from deadlines that almost killed somebody. And that old record player never fuckin’ stopped, still goin’, still playin'.
To this day, the books ain’t sorted by title or author.
They’re sorted by feeling.
And the vinyl wall up front's all wax and no sleeves, with handwritten notes in red ink. The locals swear whatever you leave here ends up in the hands that need it most.
But what gets Andrew most is the way people don't leave the same way they came, believing the place sees the holes and fills 'em up.
Late at night, he used to sit at the table in the corner by the window, watching strangers pick records the way old lovers reached for each other—slow, unsure, full of nostalgia.
And after eight-thirty, when the streets got quiet, you could hear the moment before the music starts. When the needle hits wax and the crackle comes first, that’s where Andrew Harding lives.
But back then, he could only drop by once a week early, before work. He used to picture himself playing in the basement of Type, no crowd or spotlight, only him and his guitar.
Plenty of names passed through, even Corey fuckin’ Taylor.
There’s this old rumor about him sneakin’ in one night, setting up downstairs, an acoustic set in the listening room, where there’s no mic or stage, just concrete floors, brick walls, sweat, and a silence that sits next to you when something real’s about to happen.
There's no footage or grainy photo, no proof this went down...
