this is the end

[calimac]

Being in the area, I stopped by the Mountain View Tower to see what the closing sale discount is up to now. All CDs and books are $3 or less; DVDs are 80% off. The word from the staff was that tomorrow is the last day.

The pop/rock music section, condensed up, still occupies both sides of two aisles. I slowly walked along all four rows of trays and saw only one performer name that I recognized. (A few false alarms, though. No, Cowboy Mouth is not Cowboy Junkies; Stills is not Stephen Stills; and Jesse McCartney is not Paul McCartney.)

The classical section was down to, literally, no more than 150 CDs scattered pathetically around a few trays. Mostly obscure new music. I looked at them all, literally, and the only full discs whose composers' names I recognized were one each by George Benjamin, Stanislaw Moniuszko, and Osvaldo Golijov.

Still lots of copies of Joe Montana's motivational video on DVD, though. Get 'em while they're hot.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

It is sad -- I liked Tower, not always but enough over the years -- the Tower in Queen Anne had an incredible classical music section most of the time it was open, and it helped make my classical self-education possible.

In four weeks during November/early December, I was able to visit Towers in Seattle, Atlanta, and NYC and found many great deals and spent way too much. Have bought very little music over the last five years, so it was kind of nice to stock up again.

End of an era, or an error, or something -- a trend away from lending one's bodily presence to the spaces of commerce, the palpabillity of merchandise.