In September 2026, the stretch of Mount Vernon Avenue between the 2000 and 2100 blocks went from having no record store to having two, opened two weeks apart and across the street from each other. Mobius Records opened at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue on Saturday, Sept. 12. Crooked Beat Records began its soft reopening at 2101B on Friday, Sept. 25.
You might expect the older shop to treat the newcomer as a threat. When Michael Babin, a principal at Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the company behind Mobius, called Crooked Beat owner Bill Daly, he got the opposite reaction. "He said the more the merrier, and it'll only make it more of a destination, which is exactly what we thought," Babin told ALXnow.
That reaction runs through this fall's openings on the avenue. The new arrivals are small, they sit close to businesses like themselves, and they're betting that a block full of specialty stops pulls in more people than any single shop could.
The Phone Call Before the Opening
Mobius took over the space that used to be Mulberry Lane Play Café, and it shares the room with Shorty's Deluxe, the sandwich shop. It also sits inside a small cluster of businesses Neighborhood Restaurant Group already runs on that corner. NRG owns Evening Star Cafe and Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ at 2000 Mount Vernon Avenue and Planet Wine at 2004. So a company that already had dinner and wine on the block added records and CDs a few doors down.
Babin said he "reached out to him immediately," meaning Daly, as soon as the plan took shape. At the time, Crooked Beat had no storefront open on the avenue. It was still working on a new home, and Mobius was announced as one block away from where Crooked Beat planned to reopen. Mobius marked opening day with a party, announcing on Instagram that it was "throwing a party on our little corner of Mount Vernon Ave to welcome the new shop to the neighborhood."
Crooked Beat Has Moved Before
Daly's openness makes more sense once you know how many times his store has started over. Crooked Beat first opened in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1997. It spent seven years in Old Town North, then came to Del Ray in 2023. According to The Zebra, Daly named the shop after "The Crooked Beat," a song from The Clash's 1980 album Sandinista!, and the business turns 29 this November.
Its Del Ray location until this spring was a basement shop up the street at 2417 Mount Vernon Avenue. After water damage in January, the shop reopened with limited hours at the end of February and closed that space in May.
The new address came through a customer. The Zebra reports that a loyal customer helped Daly and his wife secure a rent-to-own agreement on a standalone property at 2101 B Mt. Vernon Ave. that had been vacant for years. ALXnow describes it as a two-story townhouse that neighbors say sat empty for more than a decade.
Inside, the store is arranged by level:
- Ground floor: new releases
- Upper level: used vinyl
- Top story: office space for the revived Crooked Beat label
Daly has tried to keep the old atmosphere. "It's like the Twilight Zone, same colors, same atmosphere," he said in a video announcing the reopening. A staff member who once worked as a visual merchandiser for Tower Records and the Smithsonian hand-letters every display card and artist divider. "It's kind of a lost art," Daly told The Zebra. "People use printouts now, but she does it by hand. It gives the shop a soul."
Spaces Under 1,000 Square Feet
The two record stores have something in common with the avenue's other new arrival: they're small.
Crooked Beat's townhouse is 950 square feet. Around the corner, Crooked Run Fermentation opened its Del Ray taproom at 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue on Aug. 28, after a three-month interior renovation in the space Dolce & Bean left in spring 2025. Co-owner Lee Rogan told ALXnow, "We were looking for locations under 1,000 square feet and this spot came up." The taproom has more than 20 seats inside and eight outside.
Crooked Run isn't new to the region. Rogan and Jake Endres founded the company in Leesburg in 2013, and it already runs taprooms in Leesburg, Sterling and Northeast D.C. Rogan says the goal is six taprooms across the region. Even so, for Del Ray the company picked a small room and a short bar menu: chicken tenders, pita bread and hummus, and mozzarella sticks, along with its beers, wine and cocktails. Rogan says the taproom is meant to be family friendly, and he wants a stroller-parking area in a nearby alley. He described the thinking behind the size this way:
"We're not trying to come in and be 'the place' in Del Ray. Because that's not what Del Ray is all about. It's about little places that people can go to and shop in and enjoy, just a local neighborhood spot."
Rogan and Babin are making the same argument. Rogan wants a small room among other small rooms, and Babin wanted a second record store a block from the first. Small spaces like these only work if people walk past several of them in one trip, so each new business has a reason to want the others nearby.
Walking the 2000 and 2100 Blocks in Address Order
Taken in address order, the new and returning stops fit into one short walk:
- Evening Star Cafe and Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ, 2000 Mount Vernon Ave. These are NRG's existing businesses that anchor the corner.
- Crooked Run Fermentation, 2003 Mount Vernon Ave. The taproom's own site now lists the address as 2003a and shows the location in operation.
- Planet Wine, 2004 Mount Vernon Ave.
- Mobius Records with Shorty's Deluxe, 2016 Mount Vernon Ave. Records, CDs and merch share the space with sandwiches.
- Crooked Beat Records, 2101B Mount Vernon Ave. It's across the street from Mobius and still in its soft opening.
Check Crooked Beat's hours before you go. As of early October, the store's website lists "Soft Open Hours" of Thursday and Friday 3 to 7 p.m., Saturday noon to 7 p.m., and Sunday 1 to 6 p.m. The Zebra's Oct. 1 report gave Sunday as noon to 6 p.m. and said a grand opening was planned "in a few weeks." If you go early in the week, you'll find the upper end of this walk closed. Crooked Run has also said it will hold a grand opening and ribbon cutting, but no date had been published as of this writing.
If you keep heading up the avenue, a few more stops build on the same idea. Cubbies, a Chicago-style hot dog and sausage counter upstairs at Del Ray Public House, 2218 Mount Vernon Ave., held its grand opening in July. Farther on, at 2423B, Hypergoat Coffee Roasters is building out a second location, its first in Del Ray. As of the latest report, there was no estimated opening date. In the other direction, the Colasanto spray park at the Del Ray Gateway, 2700 Mount Vernon Ave., opened Sept. 10.
The Avenue's Fall Calendar
The new shops are opening into a street that already draws crowds on certain days. The Del Ray Farmers Market runs every Saturday, year-round, from 8 a.m. to noon. If you go early, you'll have a few hours to fill before Crooked Beat opens at noon.
The next big date is Sunday, Oct. 25. The Del Ray Business Association's 30th Annual Del Ray Halloween Parade steps off at 2 p.m. from E. Bellefonte Avenue and runs along Mount Vernon Avenue. That puts the parade on the same stretch as both record stores and the taproom, during Crooked Beat's posted Sunday hours.
Earlier this month, Art on the Avenue was scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 3. It's the volunteer-run festival founded and organized by Pat Miller. Mobius and Crooked Run were both open by then, and Crooked Beat was in its second weekend of soft hours.
Crooked Beat's grand opening is the one date still to come. When it's announced, this part of Mount Vernon Avenue will have its two record stores fully open across the street from each other, as their owners intended.
At Katharine Binkley, we keep track of openings like these on Mount Vernon Avenue because they shape what a Del Ray address means day to day, from where you spend a Saturday morning to what's within walking distance. If you'd like to talk about this stretch of Alexandria and how it fits your plans, contact us.