Austin’s Parish sells on eBay for $376,000
The Parish, the Austin, Texas, venue listed for sale on eBay, has sold to an undisclosed bidder for US$376,000.
The auction – which included the business, a 12-year lease on the venue, the chance to renew its alcohol licence and its current bookings, bar and sound equipment – ended on Sunday 10 December after 239 bids by 37 bidders. Doug Guller, founder of former Parish operator ATX Brands, decided earlier this year to sell his live music venues to concentrate on growing ‘breastaurant’ brands Bikini’s and Happy Chicks.
In July ATX sold outdoor music venue Scoot Inn to Austin-based promoter C3 Presents.
According to the Austin Chronicle, the 430-cap. Parish (pictured) garnered $250,000 in bids over the first three days, then stagnated for five days before taking before reaching the $375,000 mark on Friday. The reserve price for the listing appears to have been between $240,000 and $250,000.
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Beatles’ hair fetches $10k at auction
File under ‘not what we’d do with $10k’: Strands of hair belonging to The Beatles have been sold on Catawiki, an eBay-like auction website for “special objects”, for more than US$10,000.
The hair in question dates from 25 March 1964, when the Fab Four had their moptops trimmed during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night. The cuttings were swept up by John O’Gorman, head of make-up for the film, who later gave the hair to friends for a wedding anniversary present.
“Nowadays, collecting the hair of famous people is a booming industry,” explains Catawiki’s resident Beatles expert, Denny Hoekstra. “In general, the hair of celebrities will only become more valuable over time, which makes these locks of hair a good investment.”
“Collecting the hair of famous people is a booming industry”
The hair was offered for sale as four individual auctions: one for each Beatle. “Paul McCartney’s hair was the most sought after, selling for $2,996,” Hoekstra continues. “Each lot contained four to five strands, which means McCartney’s hair sold for approximately $600 per strand.
“George Harrison’s and Ringo Starr’s lots were both sold to a bidder from France for $2,901 and $2,885, respectively. The hair belonging to John Lennon yielded only $1,385, which surprised us.”
Elvis Presley holds the distinction of having the world’s most expensive barnet, with a collector previously having paid $115,000 for a piece of the King. Marxist militant-turned-ironic fashion icon Che Guevara is second ($119,500); Lennon, in a different auction, third ($48,000); Justin Bieber fourth ($40,668); and Marilyn Monroe fifth ($40,000).
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SFX’s Flavorus auction hits a snag
Salesforce, a San Francisco-based cloud computing firm employed by SFX Entertainment to provide it with customer relationship management (CRM) software, has objected to the bankrupt promoter’s sale of its ticketing subsidiary, Flavorus, unless a court order is issued that protects its “rights and interests”.
SFX, which filed for bankruptcy on 1 February 2016, is currently in the process of auctioning off Flavorus, which has exclusive ticketing rights to dance music festivals HARD and Electric Daisy Carnival.
Salesforce is seeking a guarantee from Delaware’s bankruptcy court that whoever buys Flavorus will be compelled to pay it US$202,510.77 in outstanding debt and an additional US$125,019.38 to pay off the rest of the contract, which runs until February 2017.
Salesforce wasn’t the only contractor left out of pocket when SFX went under: as of February, air charter firm VistaJet ($1m), Epic Tents ($442,650), PRS for Music ($327,680), app-builder Postlight ($315,000), Front Gate Ticketing ($301,400) and event medical services company CrowdRX ($269,600) were all owed substantial chunks of money.