Turning a Grilled Cheese Connoisseur’s Loss Into a Win for Techno

Only after five minutes into our discussion with Shawn Schwartz—owner-operator of the longstanding, infamous Brooklyn-based techno record store Halcyon—does it dawn on us that this man is more than just a modern-day conduit for the current rise of techno’s popularity in Brooklyn; he is the grail, the amulet, the being. He may, in fact, be techno personified: He owns one of the oldest techno-based record stores in the Tri-Cities area, the aforementioned Halcyon; he co-created Output, the most influential club of recent memory in America; and he started one of the city’s most forward-thinking record labels out there, Scissor & Thread.

At the core of his being is Halcyon, which opened in 1999 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Opening shop at a time when Brooklyn was far from what it is now, it was the area hangout spot for those into 140 BPM—not because of its artisanal cocktail menu, but because it was literally the only place in the neighborhood where you could hear DJs spin during the day. Part café, part venue, part record store, it originally started out as a place for his friends to, as Shawn puts it, “smoke weed and drink coffee while listening to awesome records.”

Moving to Brooklyn in the ‘90s was hardly the romanticized vision we now entertain, and the scarcity of cool things to do worked to Shawn’s advantage. The shop’s cheap rent and distance from the record stores of the Lower East Side allowed for Halcyon to thrive. “People would do the circuit on Tuesday and then come hang out at our spot on the weekend. They would find a bunch of stuff that they missed or that sold out at the other spots. It was a good time for us.”

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