Golden Oldies crash details emerge

When Golden Oldies manager Howard Hooper arrived at the record shop at 3 a.m. Sunday morning, he saw that a black SUV had crashed into the store and taken out the whole corner of the shop that sells records, CDs and tapes. Hooper says that witnesses told him the vehicle must have been going 60 miles per hour, and the driver was talking on a cell phone. The driver also hit a taxi (both the cab driver and his passenger were unhurt) before going airborne and striking the building with such force that 80% of the vehicle was inside the store.

After the crash, the driver’s brother, who owned the car, took cell phone photos of the site as the driver posed smiling. Owner Dean Silverstone told us, “I could tell he was remorseful but had very little to say to me, and the brother who owned the car had nothing to say to me. They were anxious to take off.”

Not all the participants in this middle-of-the-night fiasco were eager to wash their hands of it. The tow truck driver, James (he didn’t want us to use his last name), towed the SUV to Auburn per the insurance company’s instructions, returned his truck to SoDo, and called his son and daughter-in-law to sit security until he could get to the lumberyard. Then James and his family spent the next 12 hours — James’ one day off a week — boarding up the store so people wouldn’t steal the merchandise. “He was a godsend,” Silverstone said.

James worked in construction for many years and said he felt moved to help. “Two nice people who were standing there looking like their pants were around their knees,” James told us. “I don’t believe in leaving people stranded, and they wanted to open Monday, so I called in favors.” He said that the force of the crash was so great that debris was blown all the way to the other side of the store. The driver was fortunate to have missed the main support for the building — had it hit that, the whole building could have collapsed.

Silverstone and Hooper were also grateful to the folks at Dick’s, who sent over burgers and coffee to feed James and the other workers who helped shore up the corner of the store and board it up.

The mural that has graced the building for three years suffered significant damage in the accident. It was painted by a group of graffiti artists who formed a company just to create  that mural, Hooper said. “I don’t know if they can replace Elvis’s head,” he lamented.

This is the third time a car has struck Golden Oldies in its 20 years at its current location (Silverstone opened the shop at 45th and Roosevelt in 1973). The latest hit caused by far the most damage. Still, Silverstone said Golden Oldies is staying put: “We’re in a wonderful community. It’s going to take more than a catastrophe like this to get us out of here.”

The shop technically is open, though shoppers will need to pay in exact cash until the phone line is back in. Silverstone hopes to be fully operational by the end of the week; it will likely take longer to assess the damage to all the merchandise. Silverstone and Hopper encourage everyone to come in and shop! They’d also like to hear from artists who might want to help repair the mural. The Golden Oldies number is 547-2260.