The classy new 48 Record Bar caters to fans of vinyl and cocktails

Donal McCoy and Joey Sweeney want to slow this fast-paced world to 33⅓ r.p.m.

They’ve converted the lounge above McCoy’s Old City bar-restaurant Sassafras at 48 S. Second St. into 48 Record Bar, a cozy listening room and lounge based on the audiophile bars that accompany Japan’s record-collecting culture.

McCoy and Sweeney call it a space where people can gather to listen to a diverse selection of music and poetry, have drinks and conversation, and feel comfortable.

“I don’t want to say community hub, but I want to say community hub,” McCoy said.

There may be brick walls and a tin ceiling, but the tufted fabrics and heavy curtains help create killer acoustics throughout the room, which seats about 45, including 12 at the bar. It’s open from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

The menu includes such analog-era dishes as Welsh rarebit, classic deviled eggs, seasonal finger sandwiches, and a seasonal flatbread. In January, they hope to start a monthly Sunday afternoon tea service called Hi Fi Tea, with what Sweeney called “Sunday kind of music,” suitable for adult children and their parents, such as Joni Mitchell.

The cocktail menu has 16 drinks, including a Bond Girl, which mixes barrel-finished Bluecoat gin, Cocchi Americano, and bitters.

The idea for 48 stemmed from Tin Angel, the performance space nearby. Once McCoy closed it in 2017, “I was adamant that I would open another music venue,” McCoy said. He and partners opened The Locks at Sona in Manayunk, but “it went to the wall because of the pandemic.”

He turned to the space above Sassafras with several different ideas. Enter Sweeney, a musician and creator who in the mid-aughts created the blog Philebrity. “Joey and I banged our heads together over a beverage napkin and came up with this and the beverage napkin got rewritten, edited, rewritten, edited, rewritten, edited,” McCoy said.

Two examples of the diversity of the initial programming: Shows this weekend for Hoagiewave, the pop album by Tony Trov, a founder of the lifestyle brand South Fellini, and Dec. 7′s recording of an episode of the Serious Rap Sh*t podcast that doubles as a listening party marking the 30th anniversary of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the group’s premiere album. There will be an in-house reading series called Liner Notes, hosted by Alina Pleskova, that will combine a readings with interviews of writers about music, Sweeney said.

Members get a quarterly zine and early admission to ticketed events. Higher-level members get the inside track on LPs. The club’s November record of the month was a limited-edition, clear-vinyl pressing of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Up Above My Head.

As a proof of concept, McCoy and Sweeney first did about a half-dozen pop-ups to sell records and chat up potential customers.

“We would park down either downstairs at the bar, or one time we did the second floor of Brownie’s [nearby], and there was another at Bodhi coffee,” Sweeney said. “It turned out to be a great thing because we met a lot of people who were really into music. We were able to do a lot of listening and observing to see what people are buying and what they want to hear.”

“We found very quickly that there was a great appetite for this concept,” McCoy said.

As the two point out, the average LP side clocks in at 22 minutes. “That’s a great chunk of time in which to stare out the window, let your mind wander, or even hold the hand of the person across the table from you,” they wrote in their mission statement. “That 22 minutes can hang on its own as its own moment or be the beginning of a longer moment; it’s up to you and no one else. But you have to claim it. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed, but dig this: 22 minutes is just long enough to get whelmed.”