SIDEQUESTING IN AARAU
Picking up a vintage turntable stand.
Preamble
Due to focusing on my Netherlands travelogs, I haven't been able to write about my current life update:
Pursuing old hobbies.
Since the trip, I took up drawing in a sketchbook and I'm now preparing to collect vinyl records. Both hobbies are things I did in my youth but stopped doing because:
- Crippling perfectionism. I started comparing my sketchbooks to my peers and deemed I wasn't good enough so I should stop because what's the point.
- Music streaming platforms. I had a substantial CD collection and started a budding record collection, but once I moved to Hong Kong I simply didn't have the space so it just made sense at the time.
That was nearly two decades ago and A LOT has changed. So, as I was writing the travel posts, I was also drawing again—which has made me really happy—and started researching record players.
I bought my first record player during my first year of college. I was 18 years old and took out a fat student loan. Armed with no financial knowledge or support, I went through a shameful eBay craze, where I was buying literal junk. That included a broken record player, because I thought, "I can fix him."
I'm not even sure if I ever managed to. I took it to a shop by the infamous Elliott Smith tribute wall on Sunset Blvd. and I think they told me it was just too old.
So this time, I've wised up and I plan on buying a new record player with a warranty.
ANYWAY, I realized I didn't have a place to put my future record player. I'm creating a cozy reading/music nook in the bedroom, and we have a Hay tray table that I thought would fit it, but it's not big enough.
I started searching online but wasn't happy with what I found. Everything looked too new and boring. Where's the character? So I turned to ricardo.ch, which is Switzerland's eBay/Craigslist hybrid. You can bid on items, but since it's based in Switzerland, it's possible to pick them up.
The dream table
I had been searching on major shops all weekend, and started searching on Ricardo on Sunday evening. Nothing interesting. So I tried a different keyword: bar cart. I had seen some examples of people using bar carts as a record player stand. I scrolled for a few pages until I saw this listing:
Original listing here cause this dude has some pretty cool stuff.
This is exactly my style. The price was... pricey. So I saved it and continued my search, but nothing else really caught my eye.
On Monday, I couldn't stop thinking about it all day. It would match the room, it looked like it was in great condition... It's absolutely gorgeous... I consulted Daniel, and he said I could try to make an offer.
What I like about Ricardo is that you don't have to "talk" to anyone when making an offer.* You can just send them your price and they either reject it or accept it. But the offer is binding (you have to tick a box to ensure this), so no takesy-backsies. And I guess no haggling in person later.
* I haven't used eBay or any similar site for decades so maybe all sites are like this now. I have no idea.
I made an offer for 200 (should've done 180 but whatever!!) and within a minute, I got an email stating that I had won the item. It was possible to ship it, but since it's not a huge item and Aarau is only 1 hour away, we decided to make a little day trip because I thought I never visited Aarau before.
Aarau adventure
Before going to a new city, I like to see what types of cafés and shops are in town. The most interesting thing was an Indonesian coffee shop right at the train station.
OMBAK COFFEE
I love their whistling coffee cup logo.
Ombak Coffee is a family-owned business specializing in Indonesian coffee. The beans are imported from Indonesia and roasted in Switzerland.
It was very bright and spacious inside.
Apparently they're known for their amazing latte art, but I opted for an iced Americano due to the heat and a strawberry shortcake. I had wanted a sandwich, but they were all sold out.
Daniel ordered a matcha cookie and an iced aren latte. Aren refers to palm sugar that's been made from the sap of the aren palm flower buds. So, he thought it would be "aren" flavored, but it was coffee sweetened with aren syrup. (Daniel doesn't drink coffee.)
Despite this, he still said it was quite tasty.
My treat and Daniel's treat.
☕︎
When we exited the train station, I thought the bus stop looked really familiar. And that's when it all came back to me. I had been to Aarau before. Back when Daniel and I first started dating, he got us free tickets to see Portugal, the Man play at KIFF, their local venue. In fact, we were to pick up the table near that area.
Since we didn't have a substantial lunch, we walked over to a food truck outside the station that sold momos. We ordered 6 fried and 6 steamed mixed momos to share. No pics because it wasn't super fancy and also I was hungrier than I thought.
After our meal, Daniel insisted we check out the old town. He's never wanted to check out any old town in Switzerland, so I was taken aback by his eagerness.
"I just want to see what's changed," he said.
We made our way towards the old part of the city. "That's the McDonald's I used to work at," Daniel pointed.
We continued onwards. "Ooh, it looks like they have a Søstrene Grene now," he commented. "But we have one too in Lucerne."
Of all the old towns I've been to, Aarau's was probably the least... attractive. Maybe because it's not a tourist location, the city didn't bother to really fix it up. For example, in Lucerne or Zürich, there's an effort to preserve the architecture of that era, but here it seemed like it wasn't a priority.
"Not much has changed," Daniel concluded, as we waited for the bus to our destination.
Seeing it in person
The seller's location was a short walk from the bus stop. Turns out it was his home, and it was filled with all sorts of vintage furniture and items. He rolled our cart out and it looked shabbier in person: The wheels were kind of busted and it was dirty, but other than that (and from photos), it still looked great.
"Do you think you can clean off the rust?" Daniel asked.
"Oh yeah, that's easy," I said confidently.
We made small talk with the seller and I paid for the cart. I kept wondering if I should've haggled since it looked more used in person, but I'm non-confrontational and I didn't want to make it weird. When we left, I remembered that my offer was binding, anyway.
We stopped by Ombak Coffee before taking the train back to Lucerne. This time, I ordered the aren latte.
Waiting for our drinks at Ombak. The cart photographs well. It doesn't look dirty at all!
On the way home, we discussed what we would do about the wheels. They were greasy and old, so Daniel suggested we buy some rubber furniture feet at our local hardware store.
"I can fix him."
Daniel removed the wheels so we could figure out the situation. As you can see, the thread is on the legs itself, which means we need to find rubber feet with holes.
Close-up of the threaded end.
Unfortunately, the hardware store only had white feet, as the black ones only had two left. However, the sales guy came up with a solution and brought out these black cup things you can shove the rubber feet into.
We came home and immediately got to work. First, I had to clean the cart. After scrubbing and rubbing for what felt like an hour, I decided that the rusty legs† were part of the table's vintage charm and left it at that.
† It's not like SUPER rusty, just a bit of rust. It's only visible if you get really close to the legs, which I don't plan on doing.
Daniel stuck the feet on. Since they're just cups, a bit of the white from the rubber part shows, but I think it looks really cute! It doesn't bother me at all. We put the table in its place and I was about to style it until I saw that the surface still looked dirty.
The table top is made of rubber but the texture is like some fake woven design, so dirt got trapped into the grooves. Since I was only going to do this once, I decided to bring out the big guns: an old toothbrush and some dish soap.
So I sat there scrubbing for another hour before I decided that it was clean enough. The surface looked noticeably cleaner except for some stubborn areas, and most of it will be covered by the record player anyway.
The big reveal
My new soon-to-be music station!
There have been some furniture items that we had plan on selling but decided to keep in the end, like that black metal drawer unit from Ikea. It's functional and still fits the space.
I had been using that black standing rack to house my zines, but I believe it's actually for vinyl records, which is perfect now. At the moment, I have some large illustrated calendars from previous years there, because I don't know what to do with them and don't want to throw them away. (Plus a book and a ninja turtle print.)
Had to style it with similarly colored trinkets.
Until we buy a record player, it'll just be used as an extra side table.
Details of the rust and feet. The pop of white gives it a bit of a goofy charm.
I'm really happy that the feet worked out! We were going to keep the old wheels but they were so fucked that we ended up tossing them. If I ever decide to put wheels on it again, I'll just get new ones. (But I don't think I need it on wheels.)
If you inspect the yellow cords you'll see that there's still dirt in the crevices. But it's generally clean and I don't think I care enough to ever deep clean them again. I've never bought 7" records before, but that's what the space on the left is for. Maybe I'll start now?
Next steps
The next step is to obviously buy a record player. I already have one in mind: the Audio Technica LP70X. It received 4.9 stars on Digitec and was one of the entry-level setups mentioned on Turntable Lab.
I consulted one of my friends who used to DJ and he recommended that I invest in speakers and needles, so I hope this turntable will last me a long time! I've been casually looking on Ricardo for speakers.
I want to take this hobby slowly, i.e., not buy a bunch of stuff all at once. Any new hobby can be costly, and I already have another one to keep me busy. We're going to wait until Daniel gets paid before buying it. I already know what my first album will be: Metronomy's Greatest Hits!