Every Tuesday night, up a creaky, sticker-covered staircase surrounded by black walls, you’ll find a dive bar lit by red-bulb chandeliers, the cartoon “Adventure Time” silently projected on the room’s wall, and the warm sound of a vinyl record. At the bar stands Jaffar Obi Castillon-Martinez, an ear-gauged, tattoo-covered bartender who goes by Obi. He hosts the bar’s weekly “Bring Your Own Vinyl” night, playing a record from a hefty, full case or playing whatever disc a customer places on his counter.
Obi has seen Rubie’s evolve into Durham’s comfort dive bar. Rubie’s, part of a family of businesses along with Luna Rotisserie and Empanadas and Remedy Room, doesn’t match its upscale siblings.
The bar boasts rainbow Christmas lights, mismatched nude paintings, booths with torn seats, Mexican food in the basement, cheap drinks, live DJ sets on the weekends and stickers with every curse word covering the bar, walls and chairs. To Obi, though, Rubie’s is its record player.
The birth of BYOV
Obi has lived in Durham for eight years, and has worked at Rubie’s since its 2021 opening. He saw potential in the bar’s record player while bartending at nearby concert venue Motorco, and his BYOV idea became his job.
“The owner at Motorco asked me to book [Rubie’s]. I saw that they had a record player before anything else,” said Obi, as Wild Nothing’s “Gemini” album competed with his voice. “This place was all just sawdust, but I saw that and said, ‘yo, if you let me do a vinyl night here, I’ll cut down my hours at Motorco,’ and it just spiraled into a full-time job.”
Obi has collected records since his childhood, listening as a teenager to Fiona Apple and Bjork —whose image is tattooed on his right arm — while the other kids listened to west coast rap. He played bass for jazz bands in college before forming the post-pop trio Youth League, who debuted an EP in 2015.
His record collection dabbles in every genre: 1960s female punk, early-2000s alternative rock, jazz and hardcore rock to name a few. Despite this, Obi still feels that he gets stuck into listening patterns that BYOV helps him break.“It’s really awesome to me because I get stuck in my ways, listening to the same things over and over like most people can,” said Obi, while grabbing a beer for one of Tuesday’s regulars.
Customers’ album choices also spark interesting conversations, often pointing to the value of vinyl.
“When someone puts down an album, they’ll tell me about the whole album and why they like it and what the album means to them, and it turns into a nice conversation, instead of, ‘Can you put this one song on aux?’” said Obi.
‘A different vibe’
Obi claims the Tuesday BYOV crowd has a “different vibe” and “different conversation” than the weekend crowd, which may be part of the event’s appeal. Tuesdays are a “nice calm night,” where Durhamites enter to “chill” before 10 p.m., and where groups of girls can hang out “without getting hit on.”
Nolan Bebber, a North Carolina native who has lived in Durham for six years, has been to two BYOV nights.
He comes in after his catering shift ends at 6 p.m. sharp, a sketchbook, a ballpoint pen and Ween’s “White Pepper” album in hand, ready to have his record played first.
He’s the epitome of hipster: red flannel, suede shoes, and round glasses, sitting at the bar, sketching in between absent-minded conversations with Obi.
Bebber recently began building an arsenal of vinyl. Having decided he liked the “vibe” of Rubie’s after a few visits, decided to incorporate BYOV into his weekly routine.
“The last time I was here, I danced with a random man on the street after a DJ set, who was dressed head-to-toe in St. Patrick’s Day clothing, a week after St. Patrick’s Day,” said Bebber.
Another regular, Chris, comes in most Tuesdays, and brings a Duke Ellington record without fail.
He knows the regulars’ orders–both their drinks and their records.
“Sometimes people will ask me to hold onto their records, so they can listen to them here on Tuesdays,” said Obi.
‘Mr. Bean’ and ‘The Three Stooges’
On the far-right end of the bar, VHS tapes play on a one-foot-tall, boxy TV. Customers at the bar glance over to see “Mr. Bean” and “The Three Stooges” in black and white in between sips. Obi looks up from cutting limes only to switch the tapes or turn over a record when the sound turns to static.
“At my old house, my guest room was covered ceiling-to-floor in VHS tapes, and the collection was spilling into the hallway,” said Obi. “My collection makes it hard to move, because I have to start packing my VHS tapes weeks in advance.”
When asked Obi why he collects tapes, he doesn’t have much of an answer.
“I think that some people like collecting things. I don’t know why I like collecting all these tapes,” said Obi.
And what about “Adventure Time,” which he projects the back wall? The characters Fiona and Cake are tattooed on his chest, he reveals.
“I like that the show starts as such goofy nonsense, and turns into a well-developed show where there are actual consequences eventually,” said Obi.
The TV shows playing on opposite ends of the bar, spinning records echoing throughout the room over customers’ voices, and the mismatched kaleidoscope of lights add what Obi calls Rubie’s “goofy nonsense.”
For many, it’s a chance to indulge in the pleasures of childhood: cartoons and comedies, Dolly Parton stickers, Mexican comfort food. On Tuesday nights, every customer can have a personal stake in Rubie’s, from the music to the stickers that customers place on the walls.
Obi lets me pick one of the night’s records, one from his collection that I listened to in my childhood: “Oracular Spectacular,” a psychedelic, electric rock album from MGMT.
Then he offers me a selection of stickers so I, too, can contribute a piece to the sticker-covered bar: one with the bar’s mascot, Uncle Rubie, a burly man in a sombrero inspired by the bar’s owner, a “Bjorkin it” sticker, and another with a phrase too vulgar to repeat.
“In typical dive bar fashion, we are decorated just as much by the people who come here as we are by ourselves,” said Obi.
Pictured above: Bartender Jaffar Obi Castillon-Martinez tends to customers at Rubie’s “Bring Your Own Vinyl” night. Photo by Halle Vazquez — The 9th Street Journal
