Stan Baker Sports — Where Kurt Cobain's Shotgun Was Purchased

Stan Baker Sports was a sporting goods store on Lake City Way in northeast Seattle where, on March 30, 1994, Dylan Carlson — Kurt Cobain's close friend and frontman of the drone rock band Earth — purchased a Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun for $308.37. Cobain had asked Carlson to buy the gun in his name because police had twice confiscated Cobain's own firearms in the preceding ten months, and he feared a purchase in his own name would trigger another seizure.

Cobain had just fled the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles days earlier, returning to Seattle in a state that alarmed those closest to him. Carlson later told Rolling Stone that 'it seemed kind of weird that he was buying the shotgun before he was leaving,' though at the time Cobain told him it was for home protection. Six days later, on April 5, 1994, Cobain used the weapon to take his own life in the greenhouse above the garage of his Denny-Blaine home.

Stan Baker Sports closed in the years after Cobain's death. The building at 10000 Lake City Way NE has since housed other businesses. There is no marker or acknowledgement of the purchase that took place here — just a storefront on a busy commercial strip, carrying an invisible connection to one of rock music's most devastating losses.