“Flipside is about a record store the way Moby Dick is about a whale.” — The Wrap

Chris Wilcha’s Flipside begins like a homecoming and unspools into an elegy for the places that shaped us and the people still trying to keep them alive. In the film, Wilcha revisits Flipside 2 Records in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, still run by its original owner, Dan Dondiego. Wilcha worked in the store as a teenager. Against all odds, Dan has safeguarded Flipside, which is a total fragment of the analog world. Cram packed with boxes of vinyl it is the record store of dreams and lore.

On one side, the film is an informal sequel to Wilcha’s 1999 documentary The Target Shoots First, which chronicled his time at Columbia House where he wrestled with the idea of becoming a sell-out. On the flipside, Flipside is reconciliation between the commercial work (like insurance commercials) he swore he’d never do and the beautiful family life that work supported. Through the years, many creative projects ended up on the cutting floor of his life.

While a midlife reckoning is the primary theme of the film, the sub-narrative of Gen X culture is the scaffolding that holds the whole thing up. The film is chock full of so many wonderful Gen X gems I’d spoil it for you if I started naming them all.

There are also some scenes that are shot so exquisitely the film is worth watching a second time with the sound turned down. I’m primarily referring to a gorgeous scene with Floyd Vivino, beloved for New Jersey’s Uncle Floyd variety show. The editing, composition, movement, lighting, sound, storytelling and narration are all things I love about this documentary.

Watching Dan Dondiego mind the store, surrounded by boxes and shelves full of vinyl and handwritten bin cards, I was reminded once again about Rainbow Records in Oklahoma City, which I wrote about in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

In the mid to late 1980s, Rainbow Records was a magical place for me that marked my coming of age. Founded in 1975, at its peak, it carried more than 25,000 albums and was a hub for collectors, casual fans, and Oklahoma City’s alternative music scene.

For me, it’s where I ventured past the walled gardens of my alma mater, Southern Nazarene University, to thumb through vinyl with friends while the hours slipped away. It’s where I marveled at pink Springsteen vinyl behind a glass case, dreaming of the $140 I needed to buy it.

Rainbow Records was also the cultural nerve center for a small, emerging cohort not yet known as Generation X. In the late 80s and 90s, we would become Oklahoma’s largest brain drain, everyone moving away for better jobs in Dallas and beyond.

There were days when I felt as if I were the only Gen-Xer left in town. During the five years I worked in public affairs at Tinker Air Force Base, no matter how old I grew, I was the youngest person working on the installation.

Channeling Andie Walsh

I browsed Rainbow Records in my faded Levi’s, flannel and vintage rhinestone earrings. Back then I liked to pull my hair up in a mound of cascading curls. I purchased the earrings from a vintage store on Northwest 23rd Street, channeling as I did my inner Andie Walsh from Pretty in Pink.

Occasionally, I wore one of the many velvet skirts I repurposed from thrift store dresses that belonged to another generation. I was desperate to be a member of mine, even if it didn’t have a name yet. I cut the dresses in half and hand sewed a casing through which I strung elastic. This gave poor-as-a-church-mouse me a whole closet full of beautiful velvet skirts in all colors.

The 1990s brought change to Rainbow Records and the store drifted from its indie and alternative roots, losing the vibe that gave it so much charm. Basically, Rainbow Records wasn’t Rainbow Records anymore in the same way Bruce Springsteen is no longer Bruce Springsteen.

The store finally closed for good in 2007, and for nearly 20 years, I’ve been driving past it, watching it fall into greater disrepair. For years it had broken vacuum cleaners collecting on its deep, street-facing windowsills. This felt like a cruel visual joke about the collapse of a once-vital scene.

A Holding Pen

Year after year, sitting in traffic at the intersection, the building became symbolic of everything broken in Oklahoma. As I waited for the light to change I was confronted by the reality that if Oklahoma didn’t have the wherewithal to restore a 1914 building on Old Route 66—a mile from the capitol and a mile from downtown—how can we trust that it will ever fix anything? We’re 50th in education, top 10 for suicide and our citizens are mired in poverty. Don’t get me started about mass incarceration.

I’ve lived here now for more than four decades, and I can now say with confidence: some things have gotten better but many things are much worse. I don’t think it’s getting fixed anytime soon. Still, I’m hoping Strauss and Howe were right about the Fourth Turning, and very soon we’ll enter a new era, what they called a High period of social cohesion when institutions are strong and there is a greater sense of collective purpose.

For now, you know what’s especially egregious? The reason Rainbow Records was reduced to a holding pen for junk is because the owner made more money renting billboard space atop the roof than he could have made selling the property outright. It may have been a business decision, but it felt like vandalism. Profit elevated above the stewardship of a corner that had anchored the neighborhood for generations. There are municipal codes for obscenities like this.

According to media reports, the building that housed Rainbow Records was purchased in 2023, and is under slow restoration. But, for now, it remains a time capsule in limbo, the promise of revival colliding with the weight of neglect. I’m hopeful that it will become something special. So many places I’ve loved are gone.

Horn Seed, Boulevard, Ingrid’s

It’s jarring to see a discount tire store where Charcoal Oven once stood or a massive Chick-fil-A camping on my family memories of Horn Seed. It was our favorite stop at Christmastime. I don’t like to think about Boulevard Cafeteria. Losing that place was heartbreaking for our family. We gathered there in the blue vinyl booths with our kids after church on Sundays or for birthdays. Surrounded by elderly people and a man playing the piano, the kids danced around the tables, and the wait staff became our friends.

There is nowhere like that left. They tore it down and, in its place, built – get ready for it – “vibrant shops and upscale office space.” Like, it’s not 2025 and offices aren’t the bane of everyone’s existence. What a crying shame.

The other place that closed down that makes us all incredibly sad is Ingrid’s. That one hurts too much to talk about. Last night, we went to Cheesecake Factory for my son Sullivan’s 20th birthday. As we were leaving my 27-year-old daughter Juliette leaned over and said, “I miss Ingrid’s. It was my favorite place.”

It’s sad that we can never go back there, but also the half-frozen commercial cheesecake made us blue.

Change and the Sanborn Maps

Change is our destiny, written into the lifespan of every building. The structure that would one day house Rainbow Records began its life in 1914, though not even the Sanborn maps can tell us its first use. By 1925, it was a service station for Klein Oil Company; in 1930, Southern Meats & Groceries took its place. From 1946 to 1964, it was Roberts Drug Company, complete with a soda fountain that must have been a neighborhood anchor. In 1964, it briefly became a Mobil service station, and the next year, Oklahoma Blue Print and Supply Company. Finally, in 1975, it became Rainbow Records.

With each transformation, I have no doubt there was a generation that mourned what was lost. The soda fountain regulars probably hated watching it become a record store, just as I hated watching the record store become a placeholder for a fast-food billboard. Every change carries the weight of sorrow. What I wouldn’t give to go back to that little town in West Texas and walk the aisles at Piggly Wiggly once again with my beautiful mother.

For Generation X, record stores were more than retail, and Flipside, the documentary, is about more than a record store or even Wilcha’s career trajectory. It’s about Dan Dondiego who has preserved the texture of a time when music wasn’t a file but an object you held in your hands. It’s about the things that pull us away from what we once couldn’t live without, and into a world with all that we can never leave.

Dan, with no mobile phone, website or Facebook presence, is an absolute legend and Flipside 2, a cross-country road trip destination for any Gen-Xer who can get there before it’s gone. Finally, in the last scene, when Dan turns off the lights in Flipside 2 and goes home for the night, Wilcha speaks the most important lines in the film. I hope you’ll watch it and please, do let me know what you think in the comments. It’s available on Amazon Prime.