Dusty Groove calls itself Chicago’s online record store, and it has been one since before most of us had an email address worth checking. It is also a three-story building at 1120 N. Ashland Ave., on the corner of Haddon, a block south of Division, with bins you can actually flip through. Both things are true. The second one is the point of this post.
It started in a snowstorm and a South Side apartment
By the store’s own telling, two Chicago crate diggers came up with the idea in December 1995 while stuck in a snowstorm in Pennsylvania. Dustygroove.com went live in April 1996 as a part-time hobby run out of an apartment on the South Side.
The hobby lasted about four months. By August 1996 it was a full-time business working out of a low-rent back-alley office in Hyde Park, which fits: founder Rick Wojcik is a University of Chicago grad (AB’88) who worked at the campus radio station, WHPK, as a student. In a 2021 interview with the University of Chicago Magazine he also mentioned a stint as a special-duty janitor at Robie House, and offered a line worth stealing: “the city is as much a school as the University.”
From a Milwaukee Avenue loft to the corner of Ashland and Haddon
In August 1997 the operation moved north to a second-floor, loft-style space at 1180 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Wicker Park, doing double duty as office and storefront. In July 2000 Dusty Groove bought the building on Ashland, and in April 2001 it moved in for good, opening seven days a week and adding a walk-up window for locals.
The store expanded its floor space by about a third in spring 2015. In September 2010, according to the store, Rolling Stone named it the No. 3 record store in America, which is the kind of thing you’d also frame if it happened to you.
As for which neighborhood it’s in: WBEZ files it under Ukrainian Village. Others will say Wicker Park or West Town, and you can take that up with the neighborhood border wars. The address is the address.
What’s in the bins
The short version: a lot of soul and a lot of jazz. The long version, from the store itself: jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop, R&B, Latin, Brazilian, African and world music, avant-garde, rock and blues, new and used, on LP, CD and 45. Then the deep end: cassettes, 78s, 8-tracks, reel-to-reel tapes, books and DVDs.
Two details matter if you shop like a local. The store says its inventory gets refreshed every day of the week, so the bins you flipped on Saturday are not the bins on Tuesday. And records that don’t sell quickly get marked down, which rewards the people who stop in often over the people who stop in once a year.
Dusty Groove has also run its own label since early 2007, reissuing titles it thought deserved another pressing.
The takeout window
The walk-up window from 2001 came back to life during the pandemic, when the store reactivated it as a takeout window for records. By the store’s account, 2021 turned out to be the strongest year in Dusty Groove’s history. The window is still there on the side of the building, and the store lists the same hours for the shop and the pickup window: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., daily.
Selling your records there
Dusty Groove buys used records, by appointment; its website has the phone number and the email for setting one up. There’s even a documentary about that side of the business: Dusty Groove: The Sound of Transition, which ABC7 described in 2019 as a set of stories about people selling their vinyl during big life changes. Anyone who has carried milk crates of records down a three-flat’s back stairs before a move will recognize the genre.
Record Store Day is a whole thing here
For Record Store Day this past April, WBEZ reported the store opening at 7 a.m. with hundreds of limited releases, free gifts with purchase, coffee, doughnuts, toys for kids and a morning magic show. Leftover Record Store Day vinyl went on sale the next morning. Put it on next spring’s calendar now.
Why go in person
Yes, you can order from Dusty Groove online, any hour of any day. But the website can’t hand you the record you didn’t know you wanted, filed right next to the one you came in for. Take the Ashland bus or walk over from the Division Blue Line stop, give yourself an hour, and buy the thing from the people who picked it out. Your speakers won’t know the difference. The neighborhood will.
Looking for more independent shops worth the trip? Our love letter to Women & Children First covers the Andersonville bookstore side of things.
Got a record store, a crate-digging spot or a favorite find of your own? Show us your Chicago with #Chicago111.
Sources: Dusty Groove history; Dusty Groove store info; WBEZ, April 16, 2026; University of Chicago Magazine, Winter 2021; ABC7 Chicago, 2019.
Photo: Samuel Regan-Asante / Unsplash
Like a place in this story? Go see them in person. One less Amazon order a week.
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