Digital Scrapbook: Electric Fetus

I worked at the Electric Fetus in St. Cloud during my undergraduate days. During my time there I worked with some awesome folks...Jeff, Jackie, Sam, Sarah. John was our manager. I remember he was a vegetarian and when he would cook whatever he ate in the basement the whole place smelled awful. I also recall that he had an entire collection of Rolling Stone magazines (all of them).

I had the greatest assistant manager, Deb, who made sure the place was running. Deb taught me about the wonders of Rod Stewart (she had a big crush) and knew everything there was to know about ordering hippie clothes and pipe parts.

At the St. Cloud Fetus, there were, at the time, two counters where employees would work...the music counter and the pipe counter. Mostly I worked the pipe counter. At that counter you would get the crazies and the townies. The worst was the folks who would build their own pipe. We had this tackle box of parts and these folks would be screwing together stems, bowls, chambers...nuts. Then you had to ring up all of the parts separately and these idiots would pull out their coins to pay....fuck!

You would also get the most irate people at the pipe counter. Apparently being ID'ed was a problem for some of them...especially when you ID'ed everyone that was at the counter with them. One particularly busy Saturday afternoon, when I told several young men that I couldn't sell them a pipe because they did not have ID, I was called several rude names. I tod them I still couldn't sell them the pipe at which point they told me that they were "going to their pickup truck to get a shotgun". With Deb standing behind me, I explained that "shotgun" is not a legal form of identification in Minnesota and I still wouldn't be selling to them. They didn't come back.

Also, there are particular words that can not be said at the pipe counter if you want to purchase a pipe. "Bong" is a big no-no. As at least five signs with big lettering pointed out, they are called "water pipes". Using language that implies that you might be purchasing a pipe for anything illegal is grounds for declining a sale. As we learned daily at the Fetus, illiteracy runs rampant in St. Cloud.

Electric Fetus (St. Cloud)

I clipped this out of the St. Cloud Times when I was still working there.