Within seconds of entering the doors at Legend Has It, Sacramento’s first hi-fi listening bar, one is greeted by physical effigies of audiophiliac devotion to high fidelity (the faithful reproduction of sound): massive, $10,000-speakers, punchy subwoofers and a wall of shelves bowing slightly with the weight of thousands of vinyl records.

The hi-fi bar, which opened Sept. 14, is in many ways the opposite of most bars in Sacramento (and anywhere). Traditionally, music is an ancillary element to the bar experience. At Legend Has It, the bar experience is ancillary to the borderline religious appreciation of music pressed to vinyl.

Although Legend Has It is a first in Sacramento, one can’t help but feel that its arrival is a natural progression in the city’s musical and cultural evolution. Its subtle nods to midcentury modern design and minimal aesthetic feel like a future Sacramento rather than the unpolished, yet charming janky Sacramento of 20 years ago, and its uniqueness hints at a trend toward niche social spaces. If you listen closely, it winks not-so-slyly at a Sacramento on the cusp of defining itself as a primary destination for music and culture on the West Coast.

2 transplants; 2 road trips

Two things brought co-owners MJ Juliano and José Medina together 10 years ago after being introduced by mutual friends in the Bay Area: music and beer. The friends are transplants to Sacramento, reflecting a megatrend that saw a 70 percent increase in migrations between San Francisco and Sacramento counties in 2020 alone. José — a Brooklyn native whose early experiences of music involved sitting on milk crates, playing dominoes and listening to boom boxes in the projects — followed MJ’s lead, moving to Sacramento from the Bay Area after MJ transplanted from Sausalito mid-pandemic.

Both were struck by the ingenuity and sheer mass of the region’s craft beer scene and found themselves making pilgrimages. “It was a playground for us,” MJ quips. The friends are also, incidentally, former owners of record companies; MJ’s specialized in punk and hard rock while José’s focused on disco and house. Legend Has It is the resultant creative bloom of their friendship, forming from those early conversations and beers — and a lot of R&D.

The concept of a hi-fi listening bar isn’t brand-new. The growing number of hi-fi listening spaces cropping up across the U.S. are inspired by Japanese jazz kissaten, coffee houses that played jazz records on high-fidelity audio systems in the years after World War II. In the 1960s, a single LP could bear a price tag equivalent to a month’s pay for an average worker, so gathering around recorded music (primarily jazz, as the name suggests) was both economical and social. The return of hi-fi bars to the global mainstream parallels the resurgence of vinyl as a medium in general in the past decades — 2023 was the biggest year for vinyl sales since the 1980s.

To research the possibility of bringing an audio-first, vinyl-first listening experience to downtown Sacramento, MJ and José hit the road. MJ explored Asia, including Japan and some of the newer listening bars there, while José trekked up and down the West Coast and across the country to Brooklyn and back. José points to spaces like Gold Line (Los Angeles), Bar Shiru (Oakland), Public Records (Brooklyn) and Life on Mars (Seattle) as inspirations for Legend Has It.

When asked about the location — one block from DOCO — MJ and José say the decision to openLegend Has It where they did was fully intentional. The two had considered locations in Oak Park, off K Street and in Midtown, but liked that the L Street location was off the beaten path. “We wanted to be a go-to destination,” José emphasizes. “So when you’re coming here, you purposely are coming here.”

Listening with full intent

The words “discoverability” and “intentionality” crop up a lot when discussing the broader appeal of vinyl. The intention in what record is selected and the ritual of putting needle to groove is a signal to the brain that listening is about to occur. In a world where the magic glowing rectangles in our pockets do everything, listening to a record on vinyl perhaps represents a longing for focus, for hardware that does one thing extremely well.

Ben Johnson — co-owner at Delta Breeze Records on 1715 10th Street — can recall the first record he ever purchased, a Motown greatest hits album he scored from a neighbor’s yard sale. Working in college radio during his time at UC Davis and at now-defunct record shops like Records on Broadway, he observed subtle changes in the Sacramento hi-fi culture well before Delta Breeze opened 10 years ago (originally in West Sacramento).

He’s noticed the clientele at his shop shift from “hardcore diggers” (“crate digging” refers to flipping through records) to who he categorizes as simply “normal folks: folks who like music and probably have a moderate collection, and they’re not worried about rarity or anything.” He’s also keenly noted the uptick in DJs spinning vinyl live over his time on the scene: “Fast forward, and now there’s probably 10 places in town that have turntables in house, and people play records.”

While he doesn’t believe there’s much sense in the argument that vinyl is necessarily superior to digital (a cursory Google search will get you to the top of that rabbit hole, should you wish to go down it), Johnson points out that the medium does change the intentionality of the listening experience. “When you go and see someone presenting records, it’s more of a listening experience. … If I’m gonna go out and get a drink with my wife, I’d rather go somewhere where we can still have a conversation, but there’s some really cool music, and maybe be turned onto something I haven’t heard before a bunch of times.”

Legend Has It (where Ben has DJed under the moniker Ben J) has exactly this experience in mind. The resurgence of vinyl, and hi-fi listening spaces with it, are in many ways a backlash to the on-demand, shuffleable, scatterbrained listening experience that goes along with carrying millions of songs in our pockets at all times. MJ and José extoll the virtue of listening to albums as an antidote to modern listening habits: experiencing albums as albums, hearing the fullness of the artist’s vision without skipping a single song, zeroing in on the technical intricacies and subtle frequencies instead of flipping to a different artist or playlist with a quick tap.

“There are people literally here at 3 o’clock when we open our doors, just sitting here zoning out and don’t talk; just look out the window and let the sound hit them,” says José. “That’s exactly what we want. This is completely different than going to, let’s say Ace of Spades or B-Side, where you’re maybe more focused on the DJ or there for the purpose of dancing. You’re here for a listening experience. Sit down, have a beer, have a glass of wine, and just absorb the sound. It’s gonna hit you in places that you’re not going to know existed.”

‘Sacramento needs this’

When interviewing José and MJ for this piece, another word that came organically to the surface was “community.” Post-pandemic, José — who had DJed extensively in Sacramento at this point — found that many late-night spots were shutting down or reducing their vinyl DJ offerings. Legend Has It was, in part, a way to create a meeting point for “vinyl-heads” and the local DJ community. Local DJs like DJ Epik, Nocturnal and Saurus make regular appearances, and José and MJ hint at future community events, including opportunities for guests to hear albums from their personal collections on the bar’s pristine sound system.

“We can’t say enough,” José beams, “when they (the DJs) get here, all you always hear is ‘Man, this sounds amazing, this is the best place I’ve ever played.’ It’s great to hear DJs say ‘You guys nailed it.’” The chorus, José and MJ say, has been made clear through its repetition: “Sacramento needs this.”

DJs aren’t the only aspect of the Sacramento music community to credit. “Everyone that’s literally had something to do with Legend Has It is from Sacramento,” José emphasizes. This is true from the interior design (including sound-dampening pillars) to the beer and wine selection: nine natural wines, six local beers on tap from breweries like Porchlight, Jackrabbit and Urban Roots, not to mention 50 cans to choose from, including numerous non-alcoholic options.

MJ says a “shock alive” moment is imminent for Sacramento. “There’s unique ideas out there, it’s kind of becoming more eclectic.” MJ points to unique spots like Butterscotch Den in Oak Park, where guests can grill their own steaks, and the much-anticipated Railyards development as important barometer readings for a coming creative explosion.

Specific to music in Sacramento, both MJ and José are passionately optimistic. With the development of Channel 24 on 1800 24th Street by Another Planet Entertainment (whose portfolio includes Oakland’s Fox Theater, San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and many more), they feel Sacramento is poised to become a mainstay for West Coast-touring acts. “What’s the other stop-over point before going to Portland or Washington?” MJ asks. “It should be Sacramento.”

Both feel that hi-fi spaces in Sacramento are likely to increase, like when Bar Shiru first opened in Oakland in 2019 and was soon followed by several others. “There is room and opportunity,” says José. For Sacramentans as passionate about music as José and MJ, the future sounds very good indeed.

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