LIFESTYLES Orientation director by day, album collector by night

SERENA DAVIS Asst. Lifestyles Editor & SYDNEY HOIER Reporter

Adam Karnopp is known at SDSU for his job as the university orientation director, but he has another title at home. He is the proud owner of about 13,000 albums.

Karnopp has been listening to all kinds of music since he was young, from his dad’s rock’n’roll to his sister’s “Grease” soundtrack. In third grade, he bought his first cassette single: “Ice Ice Baby,” by Vanilla Ice.

In high school and college, he became more serious about his collection.

“I inherited a record player that also had a cassette player on it and a little bit of a collection and started to collect my own a little bit,” Karnopp said. “I’ve always been a ‘rummage saler,’ and so I would pick up anything that looked interesting and stuff like that.”

When CDs took over in the late 1980s, Karnopp slowly got rid of his cassette collection, but is regretting it now. He’s trying to rebuild it, but it’s only about 10% of his entire collection. When streaming took over from CDs, Karnopp took the opportunity and built up his CD collection, which now makes up about 55% of his albums.

He’s open to everything when it comes to music but focuses on the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Karnopp said. Most music lovers get stuck listening to music from their formative years and most of his favorite albums come from then, but his favorite artists come from a variety of decades.

He even remembers exactly where he found his favorite album.

“I was digging through the bins at the Watertown record store and saw it. The album was Featuring Birds by Quasi and it has a piano playing White Stripes vibe,” Karnopp said.

Karnopp has albums everywhere in his house, including his bathroom. His favorite album cover art is a style called “Cheesecake Art,” and his favorite album art with it is “Every Inch a Sailor” by Oscar Bryan.

There were record stores in Brookings and Watertown that Karnopp used to frequent, but the stores have since closed.

“Anything called an antique shop or flea market I would go to,” Karnopp said. “Thrift stores and new or used record stores. Even places like Walmart and Target are starting to carry vinyls and stuff too, but those are usually my last resorts.”

As far as hidden gems go, Knarnopp said his most interesting finds come from the most unlikely of places. His best rummage sale find was last summer when someone was selling their own vinyl collection.

“They had Bowie, Queen and Pink Floyd, and I couldn’t pass up so many classics for $200,” he said.

Karnopp said he recently began buying new albums. Before it was all rummage, but with