The Eidetic Fugue, part three.

We stopped twice between Salem and San Francisco. The spirit of young businessmen cloaked beneath our layers of cultural tokens and attitude. We were on a run.
It wasn't like we were running a business yet as the doors to the shop hadn't even opened yet. Since we were building a store, we just knew we needed something to sell if we were going to attract anyone. We kind of knew where we were going in the Bay area, we had some addresses and some company names. We had maps and some place to stay - actually I can't remember who we stayed with that fateful trip - I'm sure it did not involve any payment.

What has puzzled me, and perhaps others, in the 40+ years since the Eidetic Fugue came into existence, are our assumptions about how you stock a store. Family ethics taught me that you didn't buy anything if you didn't have the money, so nothing was bought on credit. This is very weird for a retail store. We also felt we needed a personal relationship with as many sellers as possible, so we visited as many suppliers as we could, to be sure we could work together. And we paid cash and never had a bank account. This was not a common business model, I'm guessing this style of business management is probably even less common now.

We went to some of the largest poster makers in the bay area and purchased band posters, art posters and anything that Bill, Mike and I thought was cool. I wish we had struck up friendships or at least stayed in contact with some of these interesting people. It apparently never crossed my mind - don't know about Mike and Bill. We found a record dealer that would give us 10% discount for volume (like over 20 records! wow!) and we bought several copies of the albums we all wanted and figured would sell. Before we knew it, we had spent most of our funds and were ready to return to Salem. We also must have gone to a concert, played in Golden Gate part, walked the streets of Haight Ashbury and done some other stuff but I can't really recall the details. Funny how that happens sometimes.

Oh yes, we also bought newspapers. "Underground" newspapers, like the Rolling Stone, the Avatar from Boston and several papers from the Bay area. These held the latest news for us about what was going on. These papers did get old quickly, but not for several weeks. The news cycle was a little different then. Aside from word of mouth and rumors, there was no other way of keeping track of events and celebrations. The papers were so young, both in spirit and quality. The newspaper format can be so rich and informing. I'd still rather pick up the printed copy of Salem Monthly and read it than visit the website. There are still a few newspapers in our attic from this trip, getting more faded over time. Maybe alternative newspapers will become a lost tradition, maybe not. I hope not.

And we bought buttons. Buttons were much more popular than any other way of personally stating your point of view. Tattoos were not popular, bumper stickers were stuck in mainline politics and nothing else had the same personal style as a button. A lot of the buttons were about peace, the war, drugs and being different. I suppose we bought a hundred, maybe less. We didn't wear buttons at the time so, using our personal perspective again, we didn't go too deep into buttons.

Back in Salem, we began putting out our newly bought treasures. The records went into a few cardboard boxes and sat on a small table I brought from home. Silly us, we priced them below the local store prices, even thought you couldn't buy the same albums within 50 miles. We put the 'coolest' records on the left side podium by the door to balance out the weird device sitting on the other side. The posters went up on the 30' long, 9' high, south wall and the remaining flat poster stock went into the back room. Some of the posters we had bought were 'black light' posters, so we acquired a cheap light fixture and had it available for viewing the black light posters in the dark back room. The buttons went into the display case. This left the 6'x2' glass and wood display case mostly empty, We decided to open it up to local artists. It seemed fair to give anyone a place to sell their stuff. The store would ask for 10% of the artist's sale price or we would negotiate.

We brought in my Sony reel-to-reel tape deck and put it on the 2nd shelf of the desk. We hooked up a record player and some good sized speakers. Mike opened one of the newly purchased albums, we turned up the volume and all had Pepsi to celebrate. Since there was only one chair, we all sat on the floor and it was good. Surrounding us were posters of places, people and events in a style created by our peers. We had music from our times blasting the walls of this long and narrow downtown business. We were starting a new beginning and lots of things were changing. We were on the cusp of our third decade in life and nothing appeared too hard. We were enveloped by the culture of our emerging generation. We were ready for customers and it was the beginning of Thanksgiving week. Things were about to get busy.