Washington: The Amoeba record store, a place of pilgrimage for music lovers, has said goodbye to its iconic headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Amoeba’s move was planned, but the farewell to his huge store has been expedited due to the global coronavirus crisis, which keeps all non-essential businesses in the Californian city closed, Efe news reported.
“The massive impact from the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the closure of our iconic Hollywood location at 6400 Sunset Blvd,” Amoeba said in a statement Monday.
“With no reasonably foreseeable opportunity to re-open in our current location, we are instead focusing on hopefully opening in the fall in our previously announced new home at 6200 Hollywood Blvd. This situation has been forced on all of us, and we feel this decision is the most responsible and practical one,” it added.
Considered the largest independent record store in the world, with more than 2,200 square meters across two floors, Amoeba became an essential hub for music lovers both for its enormous catalog and for its programs of intimate concerts, and meetings with artists and record companies.
The store’s small stage has hosted everything from upcoming musicians trying to make their way in the industry to established stars such as Paul McCartney, Patti Smith and Elvis Costello.
“This is heartbreaking for us. We never envisioned not being able to give the store the send-off it deserves, to give you all a chance to say goodbye. We had so many events planned to celebrate our history at 6400 Sunset! But we are facing too many mitigating circumstances that simply won’t allow for it,” Amoeba said.
Although its LA headquarters is the most famous, Amoeba started as a Berkeley store in 1990, near the University of California Berkeley, and seven years later opened a San Francisco headquarters in the heart of the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
It did not arrive in Los Angeles until 2001, but since then has become an icon of the city.
Amoeba sold its headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in 2015 and since then paid rent on the store.
An outstanding survivor of the technological transformations of the music industry, which affected record stores at the arrival of the 21st century, on April 20 Amoeba launched a collective microfinance plan to raise funds to guarantee its future and its workers, now unemployed due to the pandemic.
