Waterloo Records sits near you here, Austin's beloved independent record store and one of the few brick-and-mortar music retailers in America that has not only survived the streaming era but thrived in it. The store opened in 1982 on Lamar Boulevard — at a moment when Austin's music scene was booming and local musicians needed a retail partner who understood what they were doing. Over four decades Waterloo built a reputation for knowledgeable staff, deep local music sections, and in-store concerts that introduced Austin audiences to artists before they were famous.
Waterloo's name carries its own historical weight. Before Mirabeau Lamar renamed the settlement on the Colorado River's north bank in honor of Stephen F. Austin in 1839, the small frontier outpost was called Waterloo — a name given by early settlers, possibly referencing the famous Belgian battle site where Napoleon was finally defeated in 1815, or simply because frontier people liked dramatic names for small places. The original Waterloo was a handful of cabins and one determined woman: Angelina Eberly, who fired a cannon on Congress Avenue in 1842 to prevent the Republic's archives from being moved to Washington-on-the-Brazos.
Waterloo Records honors that original, scrappy, determined settlement by doing what it has always done: keeping Austin weird, one vinyl record at a time.