. Entrance to the building is at the far right of the photo; both windows were part of ear X-tacy. location. ear X-tacy first opened in 1985 in a 500 ft2 (46 m2) building stocked with John Timmons' personal records "and a cash advance on his MasterCard." The store name came from the band
XTC, of which owner John Timmons is a fan. As the store grew, it changed location three times over a period of sixteen years; it then remained in the same location, in a former bathroom fixtures showroom on
Bardstown Road just south of
Eastern Parkway in
The Highlands, until late July 2010. It then moved to the
Douglass Loop, a former streetcar turnaround point on Bardstown Road about southeast of its previous location but still in The Highlands. ear X-tacy carried a wide variety of
CDs,
cassettes, and
vinyl records, and also carried a large stock of
DVDs, including many hard-to-find items. In 1995, Timmons launched the ear X-tacy
record label, which released records by Louisville-based musicians such as
Tim Krekel. Due to financial issues, ear X-tacy moved for the final time to a smaller location in 2010, just south of where their previous location was on Bardstown Road. However, the financial issues continued and ear X-tacy owner John Timmons made the decision to permanently close. ear X-tacy officially closed on October 31, 2011, but due to the amount of unsold inventory still remaining after the close, the store held a liquidation sale in December 2011 before officially closing for good. The store's signature white-on-black logo stickers spawned a local fad wherein people cut up and reassembled the distinctive letters to form other words or phrases, such as "taX yer cat", "racy aXe" or "area X." ==References==