Music retail again: SKR Uptown (Classical) & Downtown to close

Jan 7 23:13 UTC 2001

As expected, the end has arrived for Jim Leonard's SKR stores on 
Liberty St.   The remaining stock is now 30% off.  
 
A clerk said that holiday sales were disappointing, and that the stores
would close by the end of January.

SKR Classical was originally a division of the old Schoolkids Records,
and for about a decade it was a pretty good classical specialist shop.
The Classical store was sold to manager Jim Leonard around what, 1997?,
as the original Schoolkids struggled for capital.   After 
the original Schoolkids suspended operations on Liberty St. in fall 1998,
Jim Leonard's SKR Classical took over the storefronts and ran a 
pop/rock side and a jazz/blues side.    The new SKR stores never seemed 
to establish themselves with customers; I rarely saw more than one or
two people in there, at times when Borders was packed. 

I was afraid this expansion would end up costing us SKR Classical, 
and my expectations were fulfilled when the SKR operations ran a 
"partial liquidation" in Spring 2000.    That large sale wiped out most
of the classical stock, and it was never rebuilt; since then the stores 
have just seemed to be marking time.

Previous comments about the Schoolkids and SKR stores can be found in 
the music conference, items 149 & 154.   (item:music,149 and item:music
,154)

   ((( linked between Agora, Music and Classicalmusic )))

response 2 of 194:

Jan 8 06:20 UTC 2001

My only worry is what is going to replace the location.  Another music store
would be nice, though economically hard to justify.  I'd prefer to keep some
of downtown reasonable attractive to visit.  Starbucks is infringing on too
much already.

At this rate, South U and the rest of downtown might not be recognizable (or
worthwhile) to me in five years.  

response 4 of 194:

Jan 8 12:29 UTC 2001

Discount Records at State & Liberty,
The music section at Borders (which is pretty well stocked),
Harmony House on Liberty right close to Discount Records,
Encore Records (used CDs, vinyl, & cassettes),
Some kind of used store (or maybe two) over on S. University,
Wazoo (used)
P.J.s (used)

Then a lot of big-box stores on the edge of town, if you want to count them.

response 6 of 194:

Jan 8 16:53 UTC 2001

(there's a store or two in Briarwood, last I checked.)

response 8 of 194:

Jan 8 19:26 UTC 2001

How could I have forgotten Schoolkids in Exile?  It's still there under
Bivouac.

response 10 of 194:

Jan 9 02:48 UTC 2001

discount is a sam goody store.
if you want to talk about used records, I think treasure mart has a slew of
them too.
Disc Go Round is on south university.

I hope tower comes back and moves into SKRs old spot.

response 12 of 194:

Jan 9 14:29 UTC 2001

It was in the very early eighties that I started building a classical
music collection.  I had no idea what was good and only a slightly
better grasp on what I liked.  Jim Leonard sort of took me on as
a project, I think.  Every few weeks I'd stop by, tell him what I 
thought of his last pick, and he'd suggest another.  It was years
later, as I started to hear other versions of the same pieces,
that I realized how he'd help me avoid a lot of mediocre purchases.

I was pleased to see him advance to salesperson, to manager, then owner,
and it saddens me now to see SKR close.  But I also know I'm part of the
problem.  First off, I'm down to only buying one, maybe two new classical
disks a year.  And those are pretty obscure pieces which would need to be
special ordered from a traditional shop.  Instead I find them on
Amazon.com, listen to excerpts, and have them delivered to my door within
days.

response 14 of 194:

Jan 9 15:07 UTC 2001

re 10, Discount records is not a Sam Goody store, since Sam Goody, Discount
Records, Media Play, Suncoast Motion Picture Company, and Musicland are all
owned by the Musicland Group, based out of MN.  They expanded too quickly and
most of their stores floundered.  The only think that keeps someo of them
alive, is that people don't know they're musicland.

response 16 of 194:

Jan 9 19:48 UTC 2001

Y'know, I still don't like to shop on Amazon. Just hate it. I'd rather go to
a store, and look, and fondle, and all that. (I *do* buy music and books over
the Internet, but only those that (a) I can't find in town or (b) that would
cost an arm and a leg if I were to buy them from the physical stores.)

Mostly, these days, I go to Borders. Though the British Isles section at the
downtown Borders stinks right now. And I'm not thrilled with the folk section,
either. The Arborland Borders, interestingly enough, has shown some
intelligence and spark in its acquisitions of those categories, and I've found
things there that I haven't at the downtown store. This is scary. (Well, to
think that a mall Borders would be better/faster/more interesting than the
main downtown store means that SOMETHING is seriously wrong at Borders HQ,
imho.) If I don't go to Borders, I will check Schoolkids in Exile (when my
knees are feeling un-creaky enough), or *ick, Twila hangs her head in shame*
MediaPlay/BestBuy. (But when I go there, I feel in need of a fix of popular
music!)

response 18 of 194:

Jan 9 20:31 UTC 2001

Musicland Group.  I know.  I worked for them and set up several stores.  It's
amazing the amount of information you get when you are hoping to become the
coveted Assistant Manager.

response 20 of 194:

Jan 9 22:45 UTC 2001

Hmm.  I'll really miss SKR, though I don't buy that many CDs from them.  I
haven't been all that impressed with Borders's classical selection, in
comparison ... but then again, I really don't get downtown often enough to
have checked out SKR's in a couple of years at least.  Borders's folk-type
sections (the only other stuff I've really ever checked out) aren't all that
great, either, I think.

response 22 of 194:

Jan 10 06:09 UTC 2001

Schoolkids was one corner of my great triangle in the late 1970's and 1980's,
together with the Michigan Theater and Borders.  Three places to go for
happiness.  I moved to Texas, and by the time I came back Schoolkids and
Border's were wearing a little thin, but still great.  Now Schoolkids and
Border's are both dead and getting to the Michigan Theater is impossible for
me to fit into my schedule.  Sigh.

Oh, you thought Borders still existed?  Sorry, different Borders.  The thing
that stands on the site of the old Borders and bears its name is merely the
animated corpse of Borders.  It still has lots of books, and I still go there
sometimes when I want to buy some books, but what differentiates a great
bookstore from a lousy one is that spirit that that staff feed into it.  In
a great bookstore, if you walk into the mystery section and look at the
arrangement of books on the shelf, then you see before you a physical
manifestation of the understanding of the genre brought to it by an informed
intelligent reader of mysteries.  Today the mystery section at Nicola's books
has some of this (but the science fiction section there is stupid).  No
section in Borders has it, though every section used to.  If there are any
staff members there who are still passionate about books, then they have been
embedded in a corporate framework that ensures that they don't express their
personal tastes in their work.  The shelves are clearly arranged by the same
anonymous corporation that arranges the shelves at Barnes & Noble, which cares
more about the price stickers than the contents of the books.  If they sell
you a good book, you can be sure that it was by accident.  Foo.

Oh well, at least Seva is starting to return to some of it's old glory.  I
thought I'd lost that as well, but it's rebounding under its new ownership.