Del Ray. Flooded out of its basement in January 2026; reopening on the same avenue in August.
- Shop
- Crooked Beat Records
- Address
- 2101B Mount Vernon Avenue
- Town
- Alexandria, United States
- Established
- 1997
- Formats
- Vinyl, 7"
- Crates
- Punk, Indie, Rock, Reggae, Dub, Soul, Electronic
- In the shop
- Buys collections, Mail order
- Opening hours
- Mo,We 13:30-19:00; Th-Sa 12:00-19:00; Su 12:00-18:00
Bill Daly opened Crooked Beat in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997, moved it to 18th Street in Adams Morgan in 2004, and ran it there for twelve years - for the first two of them alongside Neal Becton, who left in 2006 to open Som Records, so two of the DC area's best shops come out of the same room. Structural problems and rats pushed Crooked Beat out of DC in 2016 and it went to Alexandria, then in 2023 to a basement in Del Ray underneath Cheesetique. Catastrophic flooding on 11 January 2026 destroyed hundreds of records; the shop reopened on limited hours in February, but mould had got into the basement and it closed there for good on 3 May 2026 with over $107,000 of damage and no compensation. A customer of nearly thirty years then bought a building further up the same avenue so the shop would have somewhere to go. It has been trading online and at pop-ups in the meantime, and expects to open at 2101B Mount Vernon Avenue in August 2026. Crooked Beat has also run a label since 2014