Time for the latest installment of What’s That You’re Playing?, where we ask a clerk at one of the neighborhood’s record stores to tell us what’s spinning. This week: Cory Feierman of Academy Records.

Time for the latest installment of What’s That You’re Playing?, where we ask a clerk at one of the neighborhood’s record stores to tell us what’s spinning. This week, Mike Cobbs of A-1 Records helps a DJ pick out tunes for a five-hour set.

Despite the recent bad news, there are still plenty of great record stores in the East Village where you can walk in and get down with some new sounds. That’s why each week we’ll ask the clerks at our favorite shops what they happen to be listening to. Here’s what’s spinning at Turntable Lab.

The East Village lost one record store this month and is losing another, but several remain. The Local visited a couple of them, A-1 Records and Turntable Lab, to talk to DJs from the spin-centric “I Love Vinyl” party, which celebrates its third anniversary at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village on May 26. Watch the video to hear why vinyl will never die.

Suzanne Rozdeba Joe Barbosa had been selling records outside of the store.

Earlier today, John Kioussis hauled a turntable and a few remaining crates of records out of an empty, darkened storefront at 33 St. Marks Place. Before locking up the narrow nook that has housed Rockit Scientist Records since 2003, he said he had closed in part because of squabbles with one of his landlords.

Mr. Kioussis let forth a litany of complaints about Amnon Kehati, a co-owner of the building (which is for sale) and of Mark Burger next-door: he had set up tables in front of his store without asking, made unreasonable complaints about garbage bags being left out, and accused the record store of attracting rats.

“The reason we have rats in the building, according to the landlord, is because I have records downstairs and rats are attracted to records,” Mr. Kioussis said as he cleared out his shop. “I wonder what scientist would tell you that Bob Dylan and Sex Pistols records attract rats as opposed to bags of tomatoes and onions all over the floor.” Read more…

Vivienne Gucwa

Top of the morning to you, East Village!

Ephemeral New York mourns some bygone record shops, including the Saint Mark’s Music Exchange, but it’s not all doom and gloom on St. Marks. EV Grieve notices that the space that briefly housed the CBGB store now hosts a tattoo and tobacco accessories shop. Speaking of CBGB, Bowery Boogie reports that John Varvatos and Jesse Malin of Niagara are teaming up to host a Sirius XM show, “New York Nights…Direct from the Bowery.”

EV Grieve notices web postings indicating that Bar on A seems to be for sale and Banjo Jim will close on Tuesday; meanwhile City Room remembers Mars Bar’s alternate identity as an art gallery, and WNYC also revisits the dive’s closing. Elsewhere on the art scene, EV Grieve gets a glimpse of the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s food menu, by East Williamsburg pizza destination Roberta’s; and the Times considers Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s online gallery of photographs from the East Village in the 1980s, also on display at the Asia Society.

Finally, New York magazine strolls the neighborhood with onetime “mayor of the East Village” Aziz Ansari. The actor and comedian identifies “East Village dogs” and interrogates a NYC Icy employee: “This is pumpkin flavor, not pumpkin-pie flavor. Pumpkin pie has pie crust in it.”