After close to three decades, Glenn Streeter, the former owner of the Rock-Ola jukebox company, has officially retired from that business. In 2019, he sold the business to their longtime British distributor, Alexander Walder-Smith of the U.K.’s The Games Room Co., and agreed to stay on as president during a two-year transition period.
Streeter, an antique radio collector, got into renovating and hand-building nostalgia-styled jukeboxes back in the 1970s and had a retail store in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. When he learned that the iconic jukebox company was for sale, he jumped at the chance to buy it and moved it –– complete with founder David C. Rock-Ola’s office furniture and memorabilia –– to Torrance, Calif.
In his plain-spoken manner, Streeter said, “Between Antique Apparatus Co. and Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corp., I’ve had 45 blessed years. Not bad for a little hobby I started in my garage back in 1977.” (From that garage to a 70,000-sq.-ft. factory, Streeter produced tens of thousands of jukeboxes over the years.)
Read the full story in the November issue of RePlay, on the presses now.