Dead Record Stores

This blog has been on a musical theme for a while. I will steer it back into some mummified pop culture, while staying on the same topic. Here are two dead music stores in central Illinois. Both were located in low-income urban neighborhoods, and both served more than LPs or CDs.

Washington’s was essentially a community center, with a café and a video rental store along with music sales. In its last days Top Cat was selling used odds and ends as well as old vinyl. These were interesting hybrids of home-spun entrepreneurialism and corporate product retailing. Both are gone, and most folks in the neighborhoods are downloading mp3s, if of course they have a computer, internet account, and iPod.

Alive and dead, our local culture matters.