Ethan Hawke PREXBy Stuart Mitchner

The legend known as the Princeton Record Exchange (Prex) originated in April 1977 in the U-Store parking lot on University Place on the same block as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first residence. “I used to find students and offer them an album or two to help unload a van full of heavy orange crates of records,” Barry Weisfeld told Town Topics Monday, regarding his sale of the Princeton landmark to store manager Jon Lambert for an undisclosed amount. In 1980, Mr. Weisfeld’s traveling record fair found a home on Nassau Street, across from Holder Hall, before moving five years later to the Tulane Street building it occupies today. 

Mr. Lambert, 53, still shares the attitude he expressed to a New York Times interviewer in October 2008. Referring to the “cold, sterile world on the Internet,” he said, “people get an experience here you can’t get online,” adding, in the context of the plight of independent record sellers, “If there are five stores left standing, I think we can be one of them.”

Customers and dealers all over the world will agree.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Mr. Lambert emphasized, “No big changes, no turning everything on its ear.” The “main thrust” is to continue doing what has worked so well. Prex has been named among the top 20 record stores in Rolling Stone; in the top 10 in GQ; the top 10 in Time; and in the top five in the Wall Street Journal.  more