About Us

After several years of traveling to record shows week after week, we began looking for a more permanent location. Off-Center Records began as a small corner kiosk in 1988-89 at a short-lived multi-vendor shop in the former Boston Store. In that year, it then moved to The American Mini-Mall on Conkling Ave. It was a struggle to find the right 'audience' for our products. We considered closing and going back to just record shows. My wife, Mary, & I believed that our store could work with that old adage, "location, location, location."

Two years later, in 1992, Off-Center moved to Downtown Utica at 116 Bleecker St. In the beginning we tried multi-purposing the space. We've had a comic shop, a vintage toy shop and a vintage clothing store in along with the music sharing the area.

After several years, we decided to do it all ourselves and expanded greatly. Now featuring 3 floors of music – New & used LPs, singles, CDs, DVDs, guitars, memorabilia and more.
We have been written about in Goldmine magazine and has been a regular stop for music fans from all over the world, including Japan, Germany, & England and from every state. A great many celebrities have passed through their doors, as well, including Little Steven, Charlie Musslewhite, Donald Fagen & Michael Feinstein among them.

We recently celebrated 25 years in Bleecker St.
We pride ourselves in being able to fill as many want lists as we can. By carrying all genres from the most common to the very hard-to-find items. We now have over 1/2 million titles on LP, 10s of thousands of 45s. 100s of CDs and so much more!! And growing every day!

We are YOUR Downtown's Music Connection!