David Nash is an electronics whiz, born with a genius for fixing car stereos and speakers. He will tell you this much if you ask. He will also, in all likelihood, give you the best deal he possibly can, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a conventional one: in the past Nash has installed a car stereo in exchange for two iguanas and has traded a VCR for a 22-year-old human skull.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
One wall of the store is taken up by car stereos turned around backward, their wires hanging down like multicolored innards. The rest of the shop is elaborately decked out in junk. Piled everywhere, attached by suction cups, perched in niches, poking out of unlikely holes, are plastic lizards, Godzilla dolls, jungle plants, animal skulls, sports cars, and antique TV picture tubes. A whole shelf is taken up by plastic trolls. There are also C-3P0 and Darth Vader dolls, model planes, a machine gun, the torso of a female mannequin, and dozens of plastic skeletons. Clad in a white rag, a large, gruesome gray rubber monster with bulging eyes hangs prominently from a light fixture.
The Stereo Exchange is also home to two massive pit bulls–Bud Monster and Mad Max–as well as three iguanas and a family of barking frogs. Nash’s several employees, who are in charge of feeding the iguanas and walking the dogs during business hours, also do repair work and help customers. “David is very magnetic,” says Nancy Trock, his longtime friend and office manager. “A lot of people hang out after work. Sometimes we barbecue during lunch, and we get so busy everything burns. Wherever Dave’s lived, he’s always had people coming over all the time. He likes to be around people; he loves people. This is more Dave’s house than his house is. He’s here all the time, even when we’re closed. On Sunday when we’re closed, Dave’s here, puttering around.”
“Just deal with him,” Nash says, waving him off.
His tireless work ethic notwithstanding, Nash has a few friends to thank for his success in business, friends like his ex-partner Tony Ruh. Nash claims that a couple of years ago he and Ruh were the first ones in Chicago to put neon strips under cars. Ruh now owns a neon store next door to the Stereo Exchange. “Tony went off, he got the neon business, I got my business free and clear,” Nash says. “He just bought the bank building next door; he’s going to make it into a mini mall.” There are others: “A friend of mine, Dino, was working for me for a long time; he started dating my best friend. He’s in the sewers by trade, so now he’s downtown making big bucks to afford his baby; otherwise he’d still be here. He had a lot of input into what we do.”
All kinds of customers come into the Stereo Exchange. Some wear ripped undershirts covered in grease and paint. Others wear neatly pressed khakis, oxford shirts and penny loafers. Teenagers come in looking for speakers that will blow out their back windshields, and mothers in need of some rewiring on their Honda Civics drag along their kids. “Dealing with the public, it’s got its trials and tribulations, but some pretty incredible people come in here,” Nash says. “I get all the medical students from the University of Chicago out there on the south side. It’s catch as can carry, or however the hell that phrase goes.”
“Toyota Corolla.”
