After nearly a decade selling music in Logan Square, Logan Hardware quietly said good-bye last month. After a big sale the weekend of Record Store Day, according to owner John Ciba, “We didn’t open back up again.” Before abandoning its space on 2532 W. Fullerton, the store will host one final blowout sale on Sunday, May 20, followed by a pop-up sale at nearby Logan Arcade on Wednesday, May 30. When Ciba decribes his decision to close the store, he invokes Lee “Scratch” Perry, who burned his legendary Black Ark studio in 1979 because it had “bad energy.” “The only thing he could do was burn it down,” Ciba says. “That’s kind of where we’re at.”
Logan Hardware was also where I found like-minded listeners. I’ve found loose communities at other record stores, but I’ll miss the one that formed at Logan Hardware. Ciba had a knack for connecting people, even in the shop’s waning months—he recently introduced me to house producer DJ Emanuel, who’d released music on the Relief, Contact, and Trax labels in the 90s. I stopped by the storefront Sunday afternoon to find it closed. Full record crates were stacked up by the door, and potted plants sat in the windows facing Fullerton where rows of seven-inches once stood. The neighborhood had changed again.
