Of all the retail-related bummers sustained during the pandemic, the closure of Duluth's Electric Fetus in May ranks near the top.
If owning hundreds of pieces of merchandise, furniture, and fixtures from the Fetus would somehow salve that sting, you're in luck. On Wednesday, the downtown record shop at 12 E. Superior St. listed a large collection—basically everything you'd see walking into the still-operational store—up for auction.
“We were obviously devastated to close our Duluth store, which has been a music hub on Superior Street since 1987,” Dawn Novak, Electric Fetus's marketing manager, says in a statement. “We’ve had a fiercely loyal following since day one, and wanted to offer our amazing customers the chance to give a second life to some of the items that have made our Duluth store such a great place to hang out over the years.”
The iconic electrified storefront sign, Novak adds, is not for sale.
But racks containing hundreds of vinyl records certainly are, including releases from Fleetwood Mac, Dashboard Confessional, and Herman's Hermits. Also on the auction block: CDs, DVDs, retro chairs, audio equipment (including CD listening stations—remember those?), clothing, jewelry, knickknacks, display cases, goat-milk lotion, that jazzy neon sign pictured above... hell, you've been inside an Electric Fetus, you know what's available.
Bidding began yesterday and runs through October 11. There'll be a public viewing of items from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. that day, right before the swift gavel of commerce rings loud. Osseo-based auction house Auction Masters will faciliate the bidding, as it did for similar liquidation auctions for Nye’s Polonaise Room, Porky’s Drive-In, the Roller Garden, and the Minneapolis Auditorium.
The original Electric Fetus opened in Minneapolis's Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in 1968; the shop moved to its current 2000 4th Ave. S. location in 1972. The Fetus's St. Cloud outpost closed in 2014 after 27 years in business.
