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Brick Lane
Brick Lane • Things to do • Shops • Records & Books
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Brick Lane’s record shops and book corners reward slow looking. New presses sit near battered paperbacks, and crates run from reissues to odd private finds. It’s less a quick purchase than an afternoon drift between shelves and sleeves.
Records
Rough Trade East
Rough Trade East is tucked into the Old Truman Brewery courtyard just off Brick Lane. The flagship UK shop runs a deep vinyl selection with books and merch, plus a bar/café and a photo booth. In-store gigs and signings happen most days; artists linked with past sets include Sampha, Little Simz, The Hives, Blur, Public Enemy and Queens of the Stone Age. Look out for coloured pressings, plus bags, tees and posters.
Vintage Vinyl Brick Lane
Vintage Vinyl sits inside Brick Lane Vintage Market at 85 Brick Lane, down in the basement among the stalls. It’s a proper digging spot: second-hand records across genres and eras, with new stock turning over regularly. Expect crates that reward time and patience, plus the odd music book and bits of related merch depending on the day.
Crypt Of The Wizard
Crypt Of The Wizard is a heavy-metal record shop and label at 264 Hackney Road, a short walk from Brick Lane. It focuses on contemporary underground releases — from death and doom to psych and crossover — with 1,000+ new and used records and cassettes, plus CDs. Expect small-run pressings and label releases in the mix, plus merch, T-shirts and zines/print.
Books
The Common Press
The Common Press is a queer intersectional bookshop-café and events space on Bethnal Green Road, close to Brick Lane. Run as a Community Interest Company, it centres LGBTQIA+ writing and underrepresented voices across fiction, theory, poetry and kids’ books. There’s coffee for lingering, and a packed programme of launches, clubs, workshops and classes in the downstairs space.
Brick Lane Bookshop
Brick Lane Bookshop sits at 166 Brick Lane, a long-running independent with shelves for fiction, non-fiction, London and local history, poetry, travel, classics and children’s books, plus cards, wrapping paper and totes. It runs the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize and keeps a steady calendar of book clubs, workshops and launches. It was named London regional winner for Independent Bookshop of the Year 2024.
Libreria Bookshop
Libreria is a small bookshop by Second Home on Hanbury Street, a minute off Brick Lane. The shelves are organised by broad themes — “Wanderlust”, “Utopia”, “The City” — rather than genre, so browsing works by association and mood. It’s a focused space for slow wandering and unexpected pairings, with titles that lean across disciplines.
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