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Seattle’s iconic Bop Street Records is permanently closing its retail store as a result of economic strains stemming from the novel coronavirus crisis.
Bop Street founder and owner Dave Voorhees recently took to Facebook to make the unfortunate announcement. His Ballard, Seattle, storefront will shut down “by June 30th,” per the mentioned statement, though a specific date wasn’t disclosed. Voorhees also noted that he wouldn’t be leaving the record scene once Bop Street is shuttered, as he intends to begin wholesaling “LP’s and 45’s” from his home.
To thank his customers for their decades of support and afford them some much-needed entertainment, Voorhees is running a special wherein fans can purchase five LPs from his personal collection for $15 plus tax.
Voorhees concluded his message by thanking all who’ve bought from him since 1974, when he first began selling vinyl. He secured his first retail location in 1979, and he set up shop in Ballard in 1984.
Bop Street Records is hardly the only independent record store that’s suffering financially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, Digital Music News was first to report that Amoeba Music had launched a GoFundMe campaign in a desperate bid to keep its doors open. Presently, the emergency request for financial aid has earned about $232,795 of its $400,000 goal.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee recently announced that his state’s stay-at-home order and social-distancing guidelines will remain in place beyond May 4th, but he has yet to specify an exact date. The first COVID-19 case in the U.S. was diagnosed in Washington State back in January.
And to date, medical professionals have identified more than 14,000 novel coronavirus infections in the State of Washington, over 6,100 of which are attributable to King County, where Bop Street is located.
801 Washingtonians have perished from COVID-19 complications, and 438 of these deaths have derived from King County, despite the region accounting only for about one-quarter of Washington’s population.