I think it’s safe to say most people in Memphis at least know of Spin Street – even if they haven’t shopped there before, it’s impossible to travel past the Poplar and Highland intersection and not notice the giant signs advertising the store, the posters along the windows, the giant Elvis standee above the entrance or, for the past few years, the giant “Vinyl Is Back” banner hanging along the upper wall outside the store. The building itself was quite unique, and certainly far larger than it should be for a movie and music store.
If memory serves, the location used to be a Dillard’s department store. Much of Memphis history is oddly lost (no one ever pays attention to what happens, and they can’t keep facts straight) so all I can tell you on the history of this store is that at some point Dillards left and eventually the building was divided and leased out, and one of those parcels, in this case the “main” one, so to speak, became Spin Street.
As I’ve implied above, Spin Street is a pretty large store, carrying music, movies, games, accessories, pretty much whatever you might want entertainment wise, there’s a chance of it being there. A big focus of the store has been records, and indeed it does have a pretty substantial collection still of old, as well as new, vinyl pressings.
Oh, and of course, a selection of shirts, novelties, and all that. What store wouldn’t be complete without those, right?
Flash forward to earlier this past week – I heard the first comments of Spin Street closing. These rumors didn’t surprise me, for reasons I’ll get into later. Move to the 3rd, and it was announced on the Spin Street Facebook page that yes, indeed, the store is closing. They won’t know the official date until 10 days beforehand, but it’s true.
Naturally, friends on my Facebook feed had the same reaction they did when FYE in Wolfchase closed – they got upset, complained about losing another local option to purchase things they liked, among other random comments. Some went and immediately blew whatever they felt they could on items there so that they could get what they wanted. Others played the blame game, finding flaws with Spin Street and pushing the usual “it’s their own fault they closed, they should have done X” idea out there. Others still also drew more comparisons to FYE, calling Spin Street the only “other FYE like store in Memphis” which, if they had a clue, they’d realize isn’t just a coincidence.
Let me break this down point blank:
Spin Street IS an FYE store.
Sometime in the past decade, I can’t recall exactly when, Trans World Entertainment, the company that owns and operates the FYE store chain, purchased Spin Street. In something that clearly shows they at least had a clue what they were doing, they only changed the necessities in Spin Street – the internal operations. If you’re familiar with the price labels on merchandise in FYE you will notice the same labels on products in Spin Street. Not a coincidence.
If you were to have bought something the past few years, you would be offered the same VIP rewards program, and the same magazine subscription offers as, you guessed it, FYE. If you were to trade in items, once again, it would be under the same FYE process with the same pricing.
Spin Street, for all its local charm, for all the random meet-and-greets and the local concert events to happen on its rather tiny rear stage, was still just an FYE store, and was subject to the same (mis)management.
This would be the part where I’d go into the classic “why is it closing” article, much as I did with FYE in Wolfchase, but I’ll save that for its own entry later. The above point alone, though, should tell you more than enough, though, but if you really don’t understand why, well, I’m hoping the follow up will shed some light.