About the shop

Mars Records is a vintage vinyl record shop offering quality/curated music to the Piedmont neighborhood and its visitors. All styles of music represented, including a robust “local music” section. Buying and trading welcome!

In addition to vinyl records, Mars also offers a smattering of other media types (cassettes, vhs, cds, dvds), as well as media storage options, cleaning supplies and other assorted music-related items (books, mugs, etc). Mars also hosts art by local artists, rotating every few months.

About the owner

Steve Adams has been an Oakland-based career musician/bass player for over 15 years, making records and touring globally with solo artists and bands.

He has also part-timed at record shops (Tempo Records, Tower Records, Downhome Music and Open Mind Music) and sold at Bay Area record swaps. With live music on a temporary hold in 2020, Steve decided to lean into his love of vinyl and begin the journey of Mars Record Shop.

About the art/artist

Lea Zelenskis is an East Bay artist who makes illustrations entirely from hand-cut paper. She does work on commission, designs prints and cards, and has made labels for neat companies like Rhetoric Coffee. Her Black-Crowned Night Heron design can be found on Oakland Public Library membership cards. (Once, she had the privilege of assisting third graders make cutout night heron puppets for their campaign to make the BCNH Oakland’s official bird. The campaign was successful.)

Lea graduated from California College of the Arts with a BFA in Photography before returning to her first love of illustration. In recent years, she has begun working in ceramics and stop-motion animation. She loves animals, bugs, and good coffee. In the studio she can often be found amidst a large pile of multicolored scraps, tweezers in hand, gluing pieces of paper to other paper. Sometimes she finds paper in her shoes.

Links: zalinskis.com / instagram.com/lea.zalinskis

Past artists-in-residence include: Danny Luehring, Michael Wertz, Peter Foucault, Yoko Okay, Brad Bolton, Jeff Boozer, David B. Hoppe, Fernanda Martínez, I Love You Tattoo, Eva Edgren