Indie Record Store Profile: Sweat Records in Miami

In 2008, Lolo Reskin found out Iggy Pop was a fan of her record store. 

It was roughly three years since Sweat Records in Miami had opened its doors and the news of Iggy Pop’s appreciation came via a segment on CNN. The Stooges legend was showing the news channel around his favorite places in his hometown and took a moment to pose in front of Sweat’s mural, which, over the years, has included Prince, Grace Jones, David Bowie, Dolly Parton and Iggy himself.

At the time, Reskin tells Billboard, “We were like, ‘Oh my god. He knows we exist.’”

Iggy’s appreciation for the shop meant a lot to Reskin, who has lived and breathed music her whole life. Her grandmother, Joan Field, was a violin soloist who recorded and toured through the 1930s and ’40s. Her father went to Juilliard and was a working musician his whole life. The rest of her family helped ingrain her love of music through the local roller rink, where they would go all the time to soak up DJ sets throughout her childhood and tween years.

The ability to play music well skipped a generation though, Reskin admits. “I was a decent guitarist in high school,” she says. “But does the world need another decent guitarist?”

Instead, she was the kid making all the mixtapes for her friends and alphabetizing all the CDs at Best Buy. Eventually she began working at a Virgin Megastore, which she loved. But it lacked a local touch.

“There would be something that was a huge hit locally that we wouldn’t have because our buyers were in L.A.,” Reskin says. Miami’s love for electronic music and trance was not being addressed, along with a need for imported singles and acts like Better Off Alone. “I had to go up to the buyer’s office and be like, ‘Can you get all this stuff?’ As cool and comprehensive as that store was, it wasn’t by locals for locals.”

So, in 2005, Reskin opened the first iteration of Sweat Records along with a good friend. (Her friend’s ownership in the business was short-lived; she went on to pursue a successful career as a lawyer.) And mere months after opening, the store was destroyed by Hurricane Wilma in late 2005.

“That was fun. I was 23 and stoned, trying to navigate moving my business,” Reskin recalls. “Thankfully, the old owner of [local music venue] Churchill’s Pub had this little warehouse in the back and they let us move all our stuff there.” The landlord at the original location, “in true Miami fashion, d-cked us over. They said they were going to get contractors and fix our building and then weeks went by and it became clear that they were just going to take the insurance check and leave us hanging.”

Sweat opened a temporary location for about a year before the space next to Churchill’s Pub in Little Haiti became available and they have inhabited the 1,200 sq. ft. store ever since. Sweat Records bills itself as the largest selection of new and reissued titles in Miami with several thousand titles on hand. The majority of their sales stem from physical music (about 85%) with the remainder coming in from merch, gear and accessories. Sweat also hosts in-store performances, which Reskin points out have always been all-ages to help foster that love of music in young Miami residents. They also host and promote shows, club nights and partner events around South Florida and are at somewhere around 1,000 events over the years.

The store specializes in “global sounds” with a wide range of Latin, Asian and African genres and they carry a lot of imports and all the essentials in jazz, soul, hip-hop, electronic music, rock/pop and soundtracks. “Miami is such a huge international city and tourist hub that we get visitors daily from different continents,” says Reskin. “A lot of vinyl is really hard to find and/or expensive in other countries, so we get a lot of people excited to visit and stock up who’ve already scoped our website.”

While Sweat is heading towards its 20th anniversary next year — they are creating a special book to commemorate the milestone — there have been hiccups along the way. But they’ve managed to survive with a little help from their friends.

Shortly after they learned of Iggy Pop’s love of the store, the record store’s air conditioning broke (“Sweat Records to the max,” Lolo jokes) and they reached out to the punk rocker. He was gracious enough to allow them to put the image of him from their mural on T-shirts for a fundraiser and he’s been a friend ever since.

In 2012, when Iggy was named the Record Store Day ambassador, he made his official appearance at Sweat Records, which got the store featured in magazines. When he received a presidential medal of service for the arts from the consulate of France, the Sweat Records crew (who call him tío, which is Spanish for uncle) was invited to the ceremony. He filmed his commentary for the 25th anniversary of the John Waters film Crybaby at the store. He has filmed music videos there and one of their former employees, Alejandra Campos, is now one of his touring guitarists.

When Iggy made a documentary about recording the Josh Homme-produced Post Pop Depression album, the official screening was held at Sweat Records. Reskin interviewed Iggy on stage at Sweat prior to the screening and says she’s never studied for anything harder in her life. But as a Miami native, she spent a lot of the conversation discussing their shared love of the city.

“He moved to Miami in the ‘90s so he saw it when it was a totally different place and told all these crazy stories about whipping a sports car across the causeways and going out to the old fish camp on Key Biscayne to drink beer,” says Reskin. “He’s so f—king cool. He’s the best.”

Over the years the store has found additional friends in Betty Wright, Clarence Reid and Jimmy Buffett and Reskin appreciates the community that has helped Sweat overcome “hurricanes, recessions, pandemics and selling records in the 21st century.

“I always loved the classic trope of indie record stores,” says Reskin. “Most of the ones I’d gone to in high school closed by the time I was in college. So, it really was just like, ‘I want Miami to have this.’”

More in this series:
Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.
Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.
Home Rule in Washington, D.C.

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