Rainbow Records Memoir #2

I think my most popular blog post to date was the one I wrote just a short time ago about Rainbow Records. I have received at least a dozen emails requesting a digital copy of the photo, and most recently received a Rainbow Record memoir in the form of a comment about the beloved store, which I’ve posted it below.

I worked at Rainbow Records from 1980 to 1990 and it was a magic decade to be in the music biz. I too am saddened that no one ever moved in after Rainbow closed up and moved out of the building. Parking wasn’t really that much of a problem for all our customers while I worked there. Most Saturdays we would have a packed house from open to close.

I started working at Rainbow shortly after they moved across the street (out from behind the milk bottle) and left not long before the original owners sold out. In my opinion the store was never really the same again after that.

Thanks for taking all the photos of the corner, even if most of them were painful to look at. Remembering the “glory days” when we had all the neon lights up and running full around the store was a far cry from how dilapidated the corner looks now. I can also answer why the store is full of old vacuums now – the whole building was bought years ago by the Vacuum Repair Store next door and when Rainbow moved out it ended up getting used for storage for them. Because of the high traffic there at 23rd & Classen, the owners decided that rents should go up and up even though the neighborhood continued to decline.

I think that’s why no one ever moved back in. Oh, and they get most of the revenue for that corner from the billboard up on the roof!

Anyway, I’m glad you still have some great memories of our store. It was a fantastic decade in my life and I loved sharing it with everyone just the way you did. Have a good one!

–Michael