Roll the tape!
The NYC Tape Fair is back in Bushwick on May 3 with cassettes, VHS tapes and old-school entertainment galore.
Founded just last year by Anthony Morton and Ricardo Marrero, the fair celebrates the glories of physical media in an increasingly digital age.
Ahead of the inaugural NYC Tape Fair last year, Morton told Brooklyn Paper that he felt people were growing tired of endless streaming and music subscriptions, and yearning to return to a simpler time.
He seemed to prove himself right, as the 2025 fair drew more than 1,000 people in just six hours, which “way exceeded our expectation,” Morton said.
This year’s fair is even bigger, with more than a dozen vendors slated to hawk their wares at Selva, a combination record store-art gallery-cafe on Willoughby Avenue.
Sellers including Night Owl Video, Familiar Face Records and thrift shop Grandpa’s Digs will be selling everything from vintage and hard-to-find VHS tapes to “experimental” new tunes released exclusively on cassette.
Independent collectors — including Morton himself – will show off their niche wares too. Last year, Morton’s biggest sellers were bootleg Bob Dylan VHS tapes he thought no one would want, he said.
This year, the Tape Fair has some new vendors, like the Berlin-based Awesome Tapes from Africa.
“[Awesome Tapes] re-presses older Afro-rock stuff that is either not on tape, hard to find, or the records are hundreds if not thousands of dollars,” Morton said. “It kind of makes that more accessible, I’m really excited. Definitely going to spend a bunch of money there.”
He was also thrilled to welcome Academy Records, a massive Manhattan-based music and video shop he described as an “institution,” and cassette shop Tape Head City.
“He has tons of re-presses of really classic stuff and vintage stuff, like a huge, huge massive collection,” Morton said of Tape Head. “We really wanted him in the first year, couldn’t work it out, but it did work out this year.”
Returning vendor Found Footage Festival will be showing off part of their massive collection of old and obscure video, and the fair will have a soundtrack of live video on VHS tapes and music on cassettes.
While physical media has been slowly getting less popular for decades — replaced by massive online streaming platforms with massive, instant collections of music, movies and TV — there has been a surge in demand for vinyl, cassettes and DVDs in recent years.
Vinyl and DVD sales are up among Gen Z and Millenials, respectively, according to the LA Times, and many Americans still regularly listen to CDs or watch movies on DVD and Blu-Ray. Streaming services are convenient but unstable. Movies and TV shows shift from platform to platform and are sometimes deleted altogether to save money, and a number of music artists have left platforms like Spotify either temporarily or forever. Many Americans would rather buy a single copy of their favorite movie or CD, rather than pay for multiple streaming services and risk losing access when something gets axed.
“I think that sentiment is continuing to rise,” Morton said. “The popularity of not tape, but the Criterion Collection, people are wanting to own their movies, own their music.”
The NYC Tape Fair is perfect not just for seasoned physical media collectors, he said, but for newcomers too. Entry is free, and while prices of goods vary, there will be a pay-what-you-want section, he said.
“You could walk in with $2 and walk out with a handful of things,” he said. “I think it’s going to be absolutely electric.”
NYC Tape Fair returns for one day only on Sunday, May 3, from 12-6 p.m. at Selva, 1329 Willoughby Ave. in Bushwick. Admission is free, prices vary.
