Why Make Tape Crates?

You ever just get obsessed with something? Same. 

A few years ago after a Sunday morning skateboarding session in Oxnard, California, I was standing around my friend Tom's old 80's Volvo station wagon talking with him about 80's New Wave, post-punk, the banality of 90's southern California punk bands (he hates them, but I have a soft spot for it), and the history of Sub Pop records.

We have a 20 year age difference, but exchange mixtapes frequently with music that we like from our respective eras, with Tom usually educating me on obscure bands from the 70's into the late 80's, and me sharing music I grew up with in the 90's and new bands today that tap into older alternative sounds like Mareux and Molchat Doma.

Photographer Tom, by photographer Tim (me)

Anyway, I gave Tom a tape that I made for him. Tom being the type of guy who keeps a ton of random ephemera in his car reached in to his trunk and handed me a wooden Napa tape crate and says "you can pretty much only find these on eBay these days."

Now I remember these tape crates from growing up, and honestly they're nothing special. Just simple wooden boxes to hold tapes. But I remember my dad having these to hold his tapes, with Peaches Record Store stickers and other record store stickers on them. To say it struck a chord and brought back memories is an understatement.

I went home that day, found some old wood in the garage, and started constructing my own tape crates based off the original Napa crate. There is something about building a simple crate that is so satisfying in this digital world of constant stimulation and capitalistic demands, and I really started to enjoy the process.

So here we are.

I like tapes. I like crates. I like crates that hold tapes. And I want to share them with you so that you can have a crate in your bedroom, a crate in your car, a crate in your garage, and a crate wherever it is that you enjoy your analog and/or physical media. 

Tape Crates claims to be a mega-corporation. The reality is, I'm just one guy who likes crates. Support my corporate greed and engrained capitalistic tendencies by buying a crate, so that I can make more crates to sell to the hordes who also enjoy the simple act of sitting down and pressing play.

Video: Tom in his Volvo with his fun & weird shit. Filmed on the Canon GL-1.