My brother is a shoe store DJ. My father is a shoe store DJ. My grandfather was a shoe store DJ. The day I left the trade, some in my family cursed me. But now I’m having the last laugh. 

I went down to the union hall (Local #1215) yesterday, where my father and brother shoot pool and wait—in vain—for work. 

“I knew there was trouble when Adidas laid off their daytime DJ,” Dad’s colleague DJ Whizzy tells me. “I mean, sure, we knew that the double-deck days at the Camper Store were over, but nobody thought it would get this bad.” 

“Tell him about the fuckin’ iPods,” my brother Mastertrakkz shouts from across the room. “Tell him about how store managers think they can replace flesh and blood DJs with some bullshit playlist filled with nothing but old Daft Punk.”

My brother doesn’t address me directly. He won’t talk to me anymore—not since I refused to cover a gig for him once at NikeTown Glendale. I just couldn’t do it. I had gotten off a joyless shift at Puma Outlet, took a look at the turntable in the back seat of my Suzuki Samurai, and realized it wasn’t the life for me. Shoe store DJing just isn’t in my blood.

When my father heard I had taken off the giant headphones for good, his reaction was more muted. “Time was, a man couldn’t buy a pair of loafers without some sort of modern musical accompaniment. Nowadays, people don’t seem to care. They go in, come out with new sneakers, and hardly seem to miss the Diplo/MIA remix record I would have played for them. Heck, boy, you could never beat match worth a lick anyhow, could you?,” my father teases. “I remember when you tried to scratch solo over Portishead. To this day, that Onitsuka Tiger store won’t return my phone calls,” he chuckles. 

Some still hold out hope: union leaders praised President Obama’s proposed $140 million aid package for the beleaguered industry; he also closed a Nafta loophole that allowed undercutting Mexican DJs to work the tables in certain states. Some decry the measures as rank protectionism, but old-time practitioners of the craft, like my dad, are just happy for the chance to spin another day.

(Photo: John Gruber)