The NYT joins the “Vinyl is Back!” motorcade, which is led by a pristine AMC Gremlin. If you recall, Time magazine heralded the return of vinyl some months ago with the news that the format, among other attributes, had the improved “social interaction” of “getting up to turn over the record.”

The Times finds that this was just the beginning, leading off the piece with a tempestuous tale of modern teen courtship:

During his freshman year at Point Park University in Pittsburgh a couple years ago, James Acklin, now 20, felt lost among the social cliques on his new campus until he got to talking with a student who was in some of his classes. She seemed unusual, and it wasn’t just her look: thick-framed eyeglasses, bangs and vintage dresses. Then, one rainy day in February, the two skipped class and went to her apartment. As soon as she opened her door his instincts were confirmed: she had a turntable. So did he. They both spoke the language of vinyl.

Their bond was sealed as soon as she placed the stylus on an LP by the band Broken Social Scene, he said in an e-mail message. “There was this immediate mutual acknowledgment, like we both totally understood what we define ourselves by,” continued Mr. Acklin, who considers his turntable, a Technics model from the 1980s that belonged to an aunt, a prized possession. “It takes a special kind of person to appreciate pops and clicks and imperfections in their music.”

The article kindly does not name Acklin’s retro soulmate, but I’m pretty sure the resulting scene looked a lot like the Dick Shaw/Barrie Chase pas de deux in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, some of which can be seen at about the 1:30 point in the clip below:

As for the rest of the story, as is usual with these pieces, if you do the math you see that the rise of vinyl sales represents only the tiny fraction even of the decline in industry sales each year, and is positively minuscule compared to overall sales. All the writer can do is cite esoteric statistics–like the fact that Newberry Comics has sold 400 turntables. Apple has sold nearly 200 million iPods.