Thursday, August 16, 2012

Today's Epiphany

I was driving down 38th St. today and had a musing. [If you aren't familiar with Tacoma, all you need to know is that it's the business district over by the mall] It was kind of sad, but I distinctly realized that the Borders has been replaced by a furniture store and the store that used to be FYE is now an alcohol outlet store. And that's when it hit me...

We will have to explain to our children the concept of record stores, of shopping for media.

They will never understand walking down to the local record store with no real goal... just browsing the new releases, or clearance bin, or local singles. They won't believe there was once a time when you would have to go buy a disc to entertain or inspire yourself. Even the larger chains like Borders--I used to spend hours in there, going from books, to movies, to music. Best Buy might be an exception, but in most stores I can't even find CDs any more. Everyone has switched to whatever you can download or rip.

Of course we still have a couple retail stores now, but do the math: I don't have a kid yet. So add a year or two. Then add the time for said kid to reach the teen years, when they care about media formats. Do you honestly think, with our economy and culture of instant gratification, that any kind of physical media store will still be around by then?


Well, this seemed like a deep thought when I had it, but now that I'm off my feet they're killing me and I can't think straight. Damn shame.

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