Nate Niceswanger at ZZZ Records. Photo: Duane Tinkey
Writer: Anthony Taylor
ZZZ Records might not exist if Nate Niceswanger had been able to buy a chair.
“One day — I forget the year — I go to a garage sale south of Grand looking for a chair they had mentioned in their advertisement,” he recalled. “The chair was gone when I got there. But the lady was selling records.”
Niceswanger didn’t grow up a vinyl guy. “I bought some 45s and a couple albums here and there,” he said. “But cassette tapes were the cool thing for kids in the ’80s, and by the end of the decade, CDs were becoming more popular.”
So the journey to “record store owner” wasn’t destiny. Niceswanger grew up in Northwest Iowa, got a degree in computer science and math from Buena Vista and moved to Des Moines in 1996 to become a computer programmer. It seemed like a safe bet. Tech was booming, and back then, people still dreamed of landing a job and staying there for 30 years.
He and a college buddy moved into an apartment and started hunting garage sales to find cheap furniture.
Which brings us back south of Grand. While Niceswanger would not go home on that day in 19-whatever with a new place to sit, he did notice three large boxes of albums on a table.
“I’m flipping through and there’s some really nice stuff in there,” he said. “So I asked her how much she wants for them, and she says, ‘Oh, I’ll take one dollar.’ And I say ‘One dollar an album seems fair,’ and she says ‘No, just take them all for a dollar. I just want to get rid of them.’”
At a point in time when CDs had completely taken over the media landscape, people couldn’t offload their vinyl fast enough, and Niceswanger suddenly had an unexpected windfall.
“I felt so guilty, I actually gave her $20.” That boon got the ball rolling on Niceswanger’s personal collection. But it was another haul, from another garage sale, that altered the course of his life.
“It was about a year after that first purchase, and it was 1,500 albums,” he said. “Again, they couldn’t seem to give them away, so I asked how much they wanted for the whole collection, and we settled on a nickel each.”
Niceswanger realized that a collection of 2,000 records was probably too much for one guy to keep in a duplex rental, so he started attending record conventions to sell off some of his unwanted albums. He never made much — usually just enough to break even — but he enjoyed meeting people and swapping vinyl. Then the tech bubble burst, and the computer programmer found himself laid off. He decided to take the plunge.
“Approaching banks in 1999 and telling them you want to open a record store was a real challenge,” he said. “Nobody thought it was a good idea. But I wasn’t asking for much, and I think they kind of took pity on me.”
That loan led to Niceswanger’s first store, in the old Masonic Temple on Locust Street. It was a small, unassuming location — “I don’t think anyone knew we were there,” he joked — but it was a start. And ZZZ Records was born.
When the Temple was converted into its current form, Niceswanger moved the shop down Locust into the pre-rejuvenated East Village, until rising rents in the area forced him to start looking again. When he heard that Audio Labs on Ingersoll had just vacated a small portion of their building, he asked if it might be available to rent. ZZZ opened in its current spot, at 2200 Ingersoll Ave., on Halloween night of 2008.
The store is cozy, to put it charitably. When a dozen customers show up, navigating the aisles requires manners and patience. But now, nearly 18 years on, it just feels like it’s where ZZZ belongs. It’s impossible to imagine Niceswanger anywhere other than his little pocket of Ingersoll.
He is in the store just about every day, at least for a bit. If he’s not actively working the counter, he’s usually in the back room, working his way through the seemingly endless backlog. For years, ZZZ was a regular stop for people looking to offload their collections; now, there’s a kind of moratorium on purchasing. Whenever the ban is occasionally lifted, word spreads fast.
People come to ZZZ because of the selection of cheap records. They come because it’s in a good location. But they keep coming back because Niceswanger is so darn, well, nice.
“I remember my very first record show, I was so nervous,” recalled Luke Dickens of Vinyl Cup Records. “My table was right next to Nate, who was this legend in the community.
“He taught me that you can be who you are and run your business and not be an a-hole,” Dickens said. “He’s the biggest reason — he’s the only reason — I can do what I do.”
Niceswanger says he can sometimes be too accommodating, staying a little longer to talk with a regular or giving someone $10 for $7 worth of records. But he wants ZZZ to be a place for everyone, whether they’re a seasoned collector or someone who just bought their first Crosley turntable.
“We want the store to be approachable to everyone. If you’re 75 and grew up on Herman’s Hermits, or you’re 16 and just getting into current pop music, we can help you find something,” he said.
Over the years, he’s thought about expanding — to Ames and even Tulsa. But ultimately, he is happy with his little cluttered kingdom west of downtown. And with his 25th anniversary now in the rearview mirror, he plans to stay behind the ZZZ counter for as long as the city will have him.
“I’ll probably be running the store for the next 25 years,” he said. “I mean, what else would I do? I haven’t worked in the computer industry since the ’90s.” He gives a wry smile. “Everything I know is outdated.”
Contributor Anthony Taylor has written about life in Des Moines for more than 15 years. If you’d like to suggest a subject for his next profile, please send a note to editors@bpcdm.com.
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