San Francisco’s Virgin Megastore is shutting down in late April. That means that the once-robust chain will have four stores left in the U.S. at the end of that month—unless, of course, the stores in Hollywood, Orlando, Denver, and New York’s Union Square all just “forget to open” once May 1 rolls around. [CBS5.com / Pic via SFist]
closings
Another One Bites The Dust
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closings
union square is closing too:
[www.billboard.biz]
If Virgin Megastore closes where will I buy my $20.00 cds?
clearance sale!!!!!!!
That’s too bad, I have a few fond memories of shopping there back in college. They actually had a decent
“Cult Movie” DVD section. The megastore was like an alternative for people who were too lazy to hike to the Haight to shop at Ameoba’s, and felt benevolent enough to pay five bucks extra for a CD.
@eriq78: Exactly! That’s the news I want to hear
Used to have a great import singles section and a surprisingly eclectic books department many years ago, although the last three or four times I’ve been back it had degenerated. like all other Megastores, into a glorified movie’n'games emporium. I can’t see the rest of the chain lasting beyond the year.
@Bong14: “…and a surprisingly eclectic books department many years ago.”
There was one time when the shop had a display of books that documented communist Cuban, Chinese and Soviet propaganda art.
Damn. Where will I go on my lunch break now? The Old Navy across the street? ;-(
I’m interested in the clearance stuff now…
it’s sad, I feel like the Tower closings were traumatic but now this is just plain nightmarish. Where does one go to buy under the radar CDs and limited pressed vinyls? Better still, where does one go to find obscure little niknaks that aren’t obscenely priced (urban outfitters, I’m looking at you)?
While the quality of merchandise deteriorated, I always found something worth buying at Virgin (when it was reasonably priced of course) and it was always a great place to warm up or cool off during those extreme weather days. I was kinda hoping that there would still be a record store (monster or not)for younger kids to get the rush of going to a store and buying a record. You don’t get that at big box retailers like the still standing Best Buy, Target and Wal Marts (well, if you like your cusses removed), it’s like there’s millions of copies sitting in the back and the disgruntled box boy/girl will restock it with another stack of CDs without thinking about what it is they’re doing.
I might romanticize music buying just a bit, the joke with my friends is that I’m the only one still collecting CDs, but I’m not ashamed of it.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the economy or major CD retailers (I believe that discorama is still open in NYC) combined with digital retailers and labels realize that they can’t get people to pay more than 10 dollars for a cd.
Must be awesome these days to be that hard-working unsigned band whose dream it is to get a record deal, huh?!!
@owenmeany: they’ll just make it back on the road
There’s still cool stuff you find when browsing one of those stores… Yeah I can find stuff that I specifically search for on the net, but nothing replaces a single or 7″ you find while flipping through the rows of music.
irony is, an apple store moved in across the store a few years ago in SF. itunes must have killed their revenue. the irony is that the apple store doesn’t even sell the music in the shop. it would be like if amazon.com opened a kindle store across from a borders and put them out of business! but the best response so far is this shirt:
i blame i-tunes @ [www.headlineshirts.net]