Jim White has been selling his stock of music equipment at deep discounts for weeks. Now, on his store’s final day, he’s standing at the centre of what remains and still making deals.
“I guess I’ve known it’s been coming now, so maybe it’s good,” he said as a Yellowknife resident carried off a drum and beater. They, like others, thanked White for his service to the city as they left.
“It’s finally over with here,” he told Cabin Radio. “On to the next stage. I’m glad it’s over now.”
Thursday was expected to be the last day for Fiddles & Stix, which has been Yellowknife’s music store since the mid-1990s. Its closure leaves the city without anything quite the same.
White previously said sales had been declining and, with his children now grown up, the time felt right to retire. He will move south but intends to keep visiting Yellowknife, where many of his relatives remain.
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The store’s closure opens up a downtown Yellowknife retail vacancy that has been swiftly filled by other local businesses.
North Creative, the building’s new owner, will move into the second floor, while Signed, the signage and graphic design company owned by Janet Pacey, will lease the first floor from October 1.
Pacey hopes to open in the old Fiddles & Stix premises before Halloween.
“This opportunity came up to have a first-floor beautiful space and we took it,” Pacey told Cabin Radio on Thursday.
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The move is a short one. Signed currently occupies the second floor of the True Value Hardware building, a block away.
“It’s very bittersweet. They’re a Yellowknife institution,” Pacey said of the music store closure that is providing Signed with the chance to move into a new space.
But there are big advantages to Fiddles & Stix’s 52 Street location that she could not ignore.
“Being on the first floor is pretty crucial when you have a sign business and you’re getting loads of 1,500 lb of stuff,” Pacey said. “My poor guys, having to lug it up the stairs.”
She is also excited that the move will make her store – which sells northern-themed gifts and apparel alongside the graphic design and sign business – fully accessible, something the old building’s stairs did not allow.
“It’s been a great space. It’s a fun old building and it’s a really cool, historic space as well,” she said of the old 51 Street premises.
“But now we’ll make some new memories at the new space.”
