NYC’s only Italian record store will close after family feud following matriarch’s death: ‘This is my identity’

This is no amicable arrivederci.

The city’s only Italian-language record store faced a changing neighborhood, streaming services and a pandemic — but it was the death of a matriarch and family feud that brought about the final curtain.

SAS Italian Records in Bensonhurst will close after nearly 60 years in business once it sells off its inventory of Italian-language CDs and records, owner-operator Silvana Conte tearfully confirmed to The Post.

“This is breaking my heart, I’m having a breakdown: this is my identity,” said Conte, whose parents opened the store in 1967 after emigrating from Ponza, Italy. “The store was everything to my family … [but] inheritances being what they are, it’s not up to me anymore.”

Conte, 69, “held on” to the store after years of declining sales and pandemic-related struggles in order to preserve her mother Rita’s legacy – but was forced to make the decision to close up shop following the death of her mother on May 12 , she said.

“We haven’t been making money in a long time. I was just keeping it open for my mom,” Conte explained. 

“My brother and my sister, they don’t want this,” she added. “My brother thinks my sister’s right – he thinks it’s a waste of time, why would you want to keep this open? [But] he doesn’t live here, he lives far away.”

The wood-paneled time capsule of Italian movies, magazines, accessories, rosaries and other ephemera is a treasure trove of Conte family history, the owner said.

“I had my first kiss right there,” Conte recalled, pointing across the counter. “My grandmother died right over there.

“This store is everything, it’s history … My whole family is represented here.” 

SAS — named for the original owners’ children Silvana, Adrianne and Silverio — once peddled thousands of Italian music CDs and “all the Italian DVDs,” Conte said. At its peak, the store would purchase about 50 weekly Italian puzzle magazines – “La Settimana Enigmistica” – and would regularly sell out in the once booming Italian-American enclave.

“Today we order five and we’re left with two at the end of a month,” Conte sighed. “This neighborhood has changed – [there’s] very few Italians left.”.

The record store’s closing comes on the heels of another 18th Avenue decades-old institution, Bari Pork Store, closing its doors later this month.

“There’s not that much business anymore,” an employee told the Italian Enclaves Instagram account on Monday. “The area changed so drastically that you can’t keep up anymore … local people don’t patronize.

“We can’t survive the ‘holiday’ customers only,” another worker said, referring to those who moved out of Bensonhurst and only come back to shop for special occasions. “We need them steady.”

Conte said the cultural identity “is disappearing.”

“My identity is here, and it’s disappearing — just like this neighborhood,” Conte said. “This really was a ‘Little Italy’ – but once all the families moved out and lost the language … every year you could tell a little less a little less.”

Longtime customers and neighbors paid their respects to the beloved mom-and-pop shop last week.

“I’m going to miss this place, a lot of people in this neighborhood are going to miss this place,” Sergio Macaluso, 63, a retired copper salesman, told The Post. “Now it won’t be here, it’s another memory going away.”

Angela Scimone, 72– who grew up in the neighborhood but now lives in Staten Island — was in the store shopping for banners from Italy with her husband.

“When I first came here from Sicily, I was 19, [and] I met your father right here in the store,” she told Conte in Italian, “and he said he was going to marry me! He was so funny.”

Conte told The Post the only Hail Mary the store has left would be for an “angel” investor to take over.

“I want to keep this because this is part of a culture – people here are calling this a landmark and I tried,” Conte added. “I tried to keep it going, but she died, and that was it. 

“I can’t hold this up anymore,” she added. “You got to live.”