TRUE HOUSE STORIES® W/ ABBIE ADAMS # 151 INTERVIEWED BY LENNY FONTANA
Abbie Adams started with a roller skating store, which was called (Movin), deep within a very urban area of (East Orange, NJ). They would make custom-built roller skates when roller skating was very popular. Abbie happened to open up a second store at The Roxy in New York City, but then, around 1983/84, roller skating started falling back a bit, so the owners of The Roxy started having a Hip Hop night there. That’s when Afrika Bambaataa, Jazzy Jay and Hip Hop were just starting to explode in New York City. Abbie was also starting to managesome breakdancers along with the store (in NJ). Naughty By Nature, Queen Latifah, CeCe Rogers, and Lauren Hill – all lived right in the neighbourhood and as teenagers used to come into the store all the time. So Abbie felt very fortunate to be around the birth of so much incredible music. At the Roxy,Danny Krivit and DJ Julio were the DJ’s, and she owes a lot to Danny – as he really schooled me. He was a good friend of Larry Levan’s, as well his father had been in the music world, and he had such extensive knowledge of R&B. So Abbie became knowledgeable from her time roller skating at the Roxy, and running a record shop , she became more knowledgeable with the music industry because of Danny and other roller skaters. Abbie started hanging out at theParadise Garage. One of Abbie's dear friends was dating Ron St. Germain the engineer of the Peech Boys. He and Larry Levan were mixing Jeffrey Osbourne's "Plane Love" in the studio one night, and they asked Abbie if she wanted to come along. Abbie ran to the studio and was fortunate enough to meet Larry, and not to soon after, he became a really good friend of hers. Larry offered her a comp card to the Garage, because it was very difficult for Abbie to get in to The Garage because she was not gay. At the time, Abbie was around the age of 22, 23, and she just couldn’t walk in, but suddenly, with this gold card, Abbie could go whenever she wanted! Her skate shop gradually turned into a record store, sort of accidentally, because her boyfriend was a DJ and had Technics 1200s in the store, and we’d have all these breakdancers in there dancing as well and selling the skates. People would come in and ask what the music was that was playing in the background. Abbie saw the demand rise and would go to New York and buy vinyl from Frankie Ramos at Downtown Records or Charlie Grappone at Vinyl Mania. Abbie would bring it back to NJ and resell it for 25 cents more. It became more and more:less skates, more sales of vinyl records! So Movin organically went from a skate store to a record shop. Watch as Abbie tells it all right here on True House Stories.
