Off of Broad Street, deep in Scott’s Addition between warehouses and alleyways, is a black hole in the wall filled with music, vintage VHS, and (perhaps most importantly) Richmond’s preeminent collection of horror-themed pinball machines.
I came to Wax Moon on a cool evening, unsure of exactly what I was looking for, until an all-black, barn-like building loomed out of the cramped lines of buildings like a spectre out of the ether. Its door hung open, and the sound of The Cure’s Plainsong leaked into the street; a siren’s call for any searching for the gothic and uncanny.
Peering into the Moon offers one a view of stacks of vinyl records, teeming walls of DVDs and VHS, memorabilia and stuffed horror-themed displays, the all-encompassing presence of a decade’s worth of accumulated cultural artifacts.
Photo by Davis Gray Watson
It appears dark from the outside, but my eyes adjusted to the warm glow of exposed bulbs once I stepped into the Moon’s welcoming halls—collectors milled about the record bins, the strange clacking of pinball machines could be heard from the next room, Robert Smith continued to sing his blues; I could almost believe he might be there, crooning between the Texas Chainsaw Massacre display and the hanging Joy Division T-shirts.
Andrew Griimoiire, the owner, the man behind the madness, stepped out to greet me—wearing inscrutable metal merch and the kind of crooked smile our world reserves for its most genuine sons. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and got down to talking all things Richmond—beginning, of course, with Wax Moon.
Wax Moon began as Griimoiire’s own living space, doubling as the studio his band recorded in, while the shop took off. He recounted going months without using a kitchen, the storefront being shot at by an unintelligible assailant, and the slow but steady formation of a local community dedicated to the music (and the pinball) of the location. A true tale of rags-to-approximate-stability—one that Griimoiire told with a beaming pride.
The Moon’s inventory grew as its audience did, initially being a shop just for gothic and punk-adjacent music, before spiraling into the great variety that can be seen today. Griimoiire confesses that his own tastes evolved as the store did, becoming “a freak for horror movies” as his audience prompted him to include film memorabilia into the shop’s inventory—not to mention the fanaticism he seems to have developed for classic arcade games. In many ways, the store has become a mirror of Richmond’s underground—an ever-morphing blend of past obsessions and new fixations. The store’s history is one of community, and the merging of subcultures in the pursuit of a space welcoming to all of Richmond.
I asked for an example of that growth, and Griimoiire recounted his first ever donation.
“A customer rolled through and asked me: ‘Where is your Soul and RnB section?’, and I said, ‘Great question.’ He shook his head at me.” Griimoiire laughed, then continued: “The next week he dropped off crates of the stuff, and now we’ve got one of the best selections in the city. That’s another person and another part of the community that’s provided for at The Moon now.”
When prompted on his favorite donation, he confided in me that he had received a spare brick from a special customer who will remain unnamed. Of course, this wasn’t just any discarded bit of housing, but a recovered brick from the house Evil Dead II was shot in—taken from the scene just before the building was torn down. Macabre trophies like that line Wax Moon’s walls and compose its history like a foundation, each eccentric customer and strange addition to the stock being its own brick in the construction of a space built for the city that made it. This patchwork of people, objects, and experiences are not merely a business, but a shelter: for Richmond’s wayward and alternative, all the souls adrift in our urban landscape.
Photo by Davis Gray Watson
After Wax Moon got its footing as a record store, it became a record label as well. Like the store, Griimoiire’s label grew organically, beginning with the release of his own band’s album before growing to encompass other oddballs like the elusive Chilean metal band Ghâsh, who released their EP Goat through The Moon. This branch of The Moon came to a head about two years ago when Griimoiire arranged for the reissue of LA goth outcasts Cinema Strange’s self-titled album, bringing the formerly infamous performance artists to the next generation.
It’s unclear what shape the next evolution of Wax Moon will take—but that’s part of the allure.
So, come on down to The Moon, and witness whatever it is that takes shape next in Richmond’s den of the bizarre. Griimoiire told me he could not disclose the details of what’s next for The Moon as a label and business, but that it would surely be of the same distinctive essence that made his shop a beating heart of culture.
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