Local record store and venue, Beach Records, closing after 6 years

Beach Records, a record store doubling as a music venue, is closing down after hundreds of shows and many more records sold.

Owner Martin “Marty” Bourgeois is going on sabbatical after six years of serving the community with shows and records, reciprocating his love for live music and giving the scene a place to play and buy records.

The shop has a vintage feel. Rows of used and new vinyl are packed in wooden boxes labeled in marker over recycled vinyl. Entering the store, you’ll feel like you’re in a collector’s garage, immersed in decades of records spanning many genres. It was a place for all music fans.

Bourgeois is seeing this as more of a sabbatical than a closure. However, this location, which has been active since 2019, will close for good.

He has been a psychology professor at Florida Gulf Coast University since 2006, and for the next academic year, he will be on a sabbatical, taking the time to travel.

“I know it’s a cliché, but it has been a long strange trip. We survived a pandemic and multiple hurricanes, and we put on hundreds of fun shows. We’re thankful to everyone who has joined us.” said Bourgeois via Facebook.

He was going to temporarily close down starting in June or July, but his landlord wanted to raise the rent by 30% and have him sign a three-year lease. Since Bourgeois was leaving anyway, he said the rent hike sped up his decision.

“I’m kind of relieved that he made the decision for me ’cause I wasn’t sure exactly what I was gonna do for a year,” Bourgeois said. “The landlord is gonna lease it to somebody else and make more money, which is cool. I’ll take a year off and then come back.”

He hopes to open a new location nearby but hasn’t locked down a specific site.

Beach Records has been Bourgeois’ passion project since he moved to Southwest Florida from Wyoming in the early 2000s.

Already having experience, he began selling and buying records at the Flamingo Island Flea Market in Bonita Springs in 2011, an era that has been coined Beach Records 1.0.

“At some point, I decided I wanted to have a real store instead of the flea market because I wanted to start having shows, having concerts and supporting the live music scene,” he said.

In 2014, Beach Records 2.0 was a shop behind Point Ybel until 2019, when he moved to the shop’s current location on McGregor Boulevard.

Bourgeois lauded other local stores and venues for doing this for a living.

“Bands need a place to perform, and honestly, l really feel for the people who try to do this for a living. A town Fort Myers’ size, I don’t know that supporting live, local, original music is really a viable business model, so I’ve basically done it just as a hobby more than anything,” he said.

His full-time job as an FGCU professor subsidizes his income, which is why he has been able to sustain the store for all these years. He said he has never made a nickel off the shop, constantly having to dump his real paycheck into it.

“When I originally started doing it, my idea was people would come in, they go to the show, they buy records, and I’d pay the band out of that, but people who come to shows don’t really buy records. A few people will. At some point, I decided I’m just in this for the love of live music,” he said.

Bourgeois is looking to empty the shop as much as possible before he moves out.

“I got three weeks to keep selling ’em, giving ’em away. We also sell online. We’ll keep some, and I’ll probably get a storage locker somewhere and continue to sell those, but then I’ll be gone for a year,” he said.

After a few more shows, Bourgeois has to close shop and clean up the place by the end of the month.

There have been many shows at this location. Of those, a few had to stand out above the rest. When asked about his favorite moment, Bourgeois reflected on two.

Members from the legendary punk band Suicidal Tendencies came to Fort Myers on Dec. 10, 2023, with their new band Luicidal.

Beach Records moved the rows of vinyl to create space for over a hundred people to pack into the store.

“This original punk band from the West Coast days from the ’80s came and just blew everybody’s mind,” he said.

He also recounted the fake Jeff Beck story, when he and many others thought the legendary guitarist was playing at the store only to find out it was an imposter.

Remember, every day is Record Store Day! said Bourgeois.

“Fake Jeff Beck kind of became a legend, how he came in here and just kind of mass hypnotized 80 people into thinking he was Jeff Beck. It’s a cool psychological phenomenon because we all wanted it to be him, so even though things didn’t seem quite right, we convinced ourselves,” he said.

The shop gained a loyal following over the years.  Chad Blitz is one of them. He was at Beach Records last week helping Bourgeois lighten the load from the shop. They connected through buying and selling records and have been friends since the flea market days.

They bartered records for years, helping each other’s collections grow.

“The bartering turned out to be the growth of what he’s done through the years with the community of musicians and music lovers, so I’m just glad to be like of a huge root to Marty,” Blitz said.

The store is having special deals until it closes, and Bourgeois wants to get rid of as many records as possible.

Their hours are Friday and Saturday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. For information on the next few shows, click here.

The store is located at 15560 McGregor Blvd., Unit 8, Fort Myers.