Vinyl Vault on Castro Street has been a record shop since 1981. It has had three owners. The first sold to the second in 1996. The second sold to a 31-year-old former software engineer named Ana Quintero in 2022.
Every Friday night since 1995, after the shop closes at 9 p.m., six men have played a five-dollar buy-in poker game in the back room. Greg, Marcus, Jin, Tony, Henry, and Bill. Two of them are over 75. The youngest is 58.
“When I bought the shop,” Ana says, “the previous owner sat me down and said, ‘There is one condition of sale. Friday night, 9 to midnight, the back room is theirs. You can charge them rent. Most weeks, they bring beer and snacks for everyone in the store. They are the cheapest tenants you will ever have.’”
Ana did not raise the rent. She lets the men in at 9 p.m. They play until midnight. Sometimes she stays and listens. Sometimes she goes home.
The buy-in has not changed. The deck has not changed (a single deck Greg has been carrying in a leather case for 23 years; one card has a coffee stain from 2007). The rule that Tony deals first has not changed.
Two of the original players have died. Henry replaced one of them in 2008. Bill replaced the other in 2014. Both new players were nominated by the survivors. Both took years to be considered “proper regulars.”
“It is the longest standing arrangement of my life,” Greg says. “Longer than my marriage. Longer than my career. The pandemic was the only year we played by Zoom, and it was terrible.”
On the night I sat in the back room, the table won was $8.50. Greg won it. He bought everyone a beer with the proceeds. The remainder, $0.50, went into a coffee can on the shelf labeled FUNERAL FUND.
“For when one of us goes,” Greg said. “There’s about $42 in there.”
