citypaper: archives

Unchanged Melody
Washington’s last jukebox heroes live life three minutes at a time.

Cover Story

It’s quitting time at D.C. Vending Co.

Tom and Bill Deoudes, 48 and 50, have just finished a game of Golden Tee and are making the lazy yet practiced movements that suggest they’re almost ready to drive home to Maryland. On the billet this weekend: an outing to a baseball clinic for Bill and his son, maybe deer hunting for Tom. Certainly nothing that involves peering into a box.

Around the Deoudes brothers’ Petworth warehouse are jukeboxes. A Wurlitzer “Bubbler” is on prominent display—an ’80s replica of the ’40s model, supposedly the most popular jukebox ever made, now shining with plasticized chrome. The brothers rent it out for high-school graduations and office parties, where it earns its keep blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd. Most of the boxes lead less active lives. In fact, the ones the brothers aren’t fixing appear to have languished in situ for a long, long time. They’re pushed behind arcade-game terminals and other vending apparatus or, as is the case in a room off the fixing floor, stacked in the dark.... Continued

Issue of Feb. 11 - 17, 2005

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