Circuit City: The final sales -- what you can get for cheap!

By Kevin Pang |Tribune reporter


Circuit City stores in the U.S. will close for good after Sunday, and thousands of employees will be out of work. (Tribune photo by Candice C. Cusic / February 27, 2009)


Along the desolate, gray-boxed stretch of Elston Avenue lies the sad, tattered remains of an America that once was. These were heady times, when happiness was measured by the inch-count on your plasma TV or the number of language subtitles available on "Nights in Rodanthe."

Then, our economy leapt out from cruising altitude with neither chute nor cord, and once-mighty retailer Circuit City is reduced to a going-out-of-business sale—the saddest of all sales—where shoppers fight one another for scraps on bones.

After this Sunday, Circuit Cities across the nation close for good, and its 30,000-member workforce (whoever is left, anyway) will join the ranks of the unemployed. Inside the store near Fullerton Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway on Monday, there's a funereal quality. Employees—wearing sullen faces—who when asked if a display model Sony Vaio laptop missing nine keys is still $623.99, answer with a mechanical, leave-me-the-hell-alone "yep." It's not as if they object to helping, but they're also texting while ringing up customers at the checkout line, because really, what are they gonna do, fire them?

Yellow "caution" tape crisscrosses entire aisles, like a crime scene. Workers strip metal mounts off walls that months earlier held up $5,000 high-definition TVs (a half dozen remain for $1,300 or so). Wall fixtures, checkout counters, glass cases and hand carts—it's all for sale here.

We found bargains at one store

2500 N. Elston Ave.

•"80 Hour Energy Spray": $1.50

•"Home Improvement: The Complete Sixth Season": $6

•Six packs of 300-count cotton swabs: $1

•100 blank DVD-R discs: $15

•"World Wrestling Entertainment, The Music Volume 8": $4.20

•Armband + protective case for "SanDisk Ardis" MP3 player: $2.09

•"National Lampoon: The Complete Collection" DVD-ROM: $16

•"Hits CD," Insane Clown Posse: $3.60

Hanging above all is a poster board counting down the days until Circuit City is no more, and for the next six days, the store is pushing to sell off its remaining merchandise, which one could describe as, oh, scrap heap? Too generous. Bottom of the barrel? Let's not sully the good name of barrels.

Just the Friday before, CDs, DVDs and computer games each had a dedicated aisle. By Monday, they have all been bunched into one 70-percent-off row of pop cultural tragedies.

One can't help but empathize with the hardworking artists who toil in creative sweat in the name of art and commerce, but one is also forced to ask: "Is a greatest hits compilation from the Insane Clown Posse really worth $3.60?"

Within these racks we find the career vestiges of "American Idol" castoffs.

There's Bucky Covington, the country crooner who placed eighth in Season 5, and Constantine Maroulis, who finished sixth in Season 4, and some guy named Josh Gracin, and this gal, and that other dude, and somebody else, and Phil Stacey, whose self-titled CD has a sticker attached reminding all that, "YES! He's the Phil Stacey you saw on national TV."

The "American Idol" brand extends to computer software: Show judge Randy Jackson proudly endorses the "American Idol Extreme Music Creator," a recording and mixing program for your PC. Quoth Jackson: "This software is the bomb!"

Liquidation sales contain, after all, the word "sales," and Circuit City employs the sneaky technique of screaming "huge discount!" while jacking the original sticker price to exorbitant amounts. Case in point: "Digital Video for Dummies," a book Amazon.com says is $24.99 but is first marked here at $63.99—but now "70 percent" off.

But there's no point in speaking ill of the corporate dead, even if they decide to charge $14.99 (40 percent off!) for four AA batteries. Let us remember the employees, who must be thinking on this sad week, "Oh, how I wish I worked at Best Buy."

kpang@tribune.com