Iconic Minneapolis record shop to close citing concerns over safety
Hymies Records, an iconic secondhand record shop located on Lake Street in Minneapolis, is closing after 37 years in business. The alarming part of the announcement was the recognition that it is no longer safe to operate the business at 38th and East Lake Street — a location less than a mile from the burned-out 3rd Precinct police station, which was destroyed during the riots of 2020.
I grew up just south of Hymies in south Minneapolis’s Longfellow neighborhood. It was a great place to be a kid in the ’70s and ’80s, but for many, those days have long since passed. The anti-police rhetoric that exploded in 2020 has only hastened the decline. The Minneapolis Police Department has lost nearly 400 police officers since 2019, and those losses are being felt by citizens and businesses alike.
Hymies’ current owner, Adam Taylor, told the MPR news:
“The city is broken. There’s no police presence … I called 911 over a dozen times, either I get put on hold or they call me back in a few minutes. When I was attacked, 911 didn’t arrive until the next day.”
Taylor added:
“I’ve suffered constant graffiti, constant shoplifting … a very bad bathroom fire caused by a homeless guy with a cigarette. I’ve been beaten up twice. I’ve been robbed at knife point. I’ve had rocks and stones thrown at me.”
A previous owner, Oral Keese, added that while he had difficulties in the area when he owned Hymies, “I can’t imagine now, running the store in this neighborhood, personally.”
The announcement regarding Hymies comes following earlier announcements from Frattallones Hardware and CVS, two south Minneapolis staple businesses, also closing after citing rising crime in the area.
The worst part of all of this is the knowledge that it was avoidable. But the city has embraced activist voices and has sided with dysfunction over function. We can expect things to continue deteriorating, especially if city politics continue moving in a socialist direction.