I visited the Juice Pharm in the last days of its Skywalk location yesterday.  It is moving to 208 E. First St., the former Red Herring Lounge location. The beverages are always tasty, and feel more like a meal than a drink. I will miss the Skywalk location, though I admit I don’t get there as often as I would like.

Downtown coffee shops feel like they are becoming luxuries, not mainstays; I miss the Bakehouse. I even kind of miss the Greenery, which was a great place to get a coffee while bus transferring. It’s still there, but it’s upstairs — and oddly, I have “street-level days” and I have “Skywalk days,” and I have fewer Skywalk days, so I get there less often. I feel like I should buy more Starbucks just to make sure that they stay open. Pizza Man is gone, and so is my pizza by the slice. Great Harvest has been a great addition to my street-level days. The Holiday Center still has Subway, Zen House, I think, and Valentini’s, I think, as well as a Hallmark store. Those feel rarer and rarer.

Greenery, from my Skywalk Days (Photo from Holiday Center Website)

Subway, from my Skywalk Days (Photo from Holiday Center Website)  It’s a chain, yeah, but it’s the chain that feeds me after dark downtown for less than ten dollars.

The real benefit of my time downtown was the Electric Fetus Valentine’s Sale. So many guests to Duluth wonder what on earth an Electric Fetus is.

It’s where my generation goes to get physical media, apparently.

I was sorely tempted — there was a stack of Low CDs — someone sold their collection … which ones am I missing. There have been two Kylie CDs in the last year … I am behind.

I did buy a new New Order CD … but it pales in comparison to this:

New Order seem to be making a comeback.

Or maybe my generation is just being pandered to, the way that the Traveling Wilburys pandered to my mother’s generation.

But what I most loved finding was this:

Beth Gibbons was the voice in Portishead, one of the best bands of my college years. I remember bowling, once, when this song came on, and my knees melted at the same time that my head lifted off my shoulders in euphoria.

If you want to know why I love this piece, you can read a review on Pitchfork. Meanwhile, for a sidewalk day, the haul was pretty good.