It's Like a Broken Record

Before Christmas we had Tower Records bite the dust, and about a week ago, it was announced that Chicago's losing its Virgin Megastore in a couple of months. (Salt Lake City is also losing it's store--I'm not sure what to make of that particular pairing.)

Although I never was that enamored of Virgin, it'll be a blow to Chicago's variety of available CDs when it disappears. While the store didn't carry everything, of course, it seemed like it had more complete selection than even the Tower stores. If I was looking for some stuff at any given time, I could usually count on finding a greater percentage of it at Virgin than anywhere else. Yes, I could find one or two other things at other places, but it would only be with one or two other CDs. Virgin tended to have things by the armful, if I was interested.

Of course, that leads to another part of their downfall, the fact that, although they had things I could buy by the armful, I rarely did. Their prices were as high as anywhere, so if I had a chance to find something elsewhere, I would. That was something of a paradox, that there wasn't an awful lot that you couldn't find somewhere else. So I didn't end up buying a lot from Virgin. If more than a few others were browsing more than they were buying, it wouldn't take long until it added up to real money that they weren't earning.

The experience of buying CDs will be less in Chicago. If you're looking for a wide swath of what's new, Virgin was a good place to find it. Once Virgin is gone, I'm not sure where to go for a similar overview. Shopping for CDs will be far more hit and miss in the city. There are still some places I like to go. Reckless Records in Wicker Park or Lakeview are good, but over the past couple of years, they seem to be focusing even more into their own little niche. (I've recently heard that they've opened a store in the Loop, which I'll have to check out at my earliest convenience.) Laurie's Planet of Sound gets good word of mouth, and I've only been there a couple of times, but I've been disappointed by the lack of depth in their selection. Sometimes when I'm CD shopping, I like to find something that I've heard of but not yet seen, and in my experience at Laurie's, I've never found anything that I hadn't already been aware of. A lot of people seem to swear by Rolling Stone Records on Irving Park, but I find that an odd store. While they have good prices, and they generally have a fair amount of new stuff, their selection beyond that always seems somewhat spotty to me. For some reason, I generally forget about Rock Records in the Loop. I've been in there a handful of times, but never when I've actively been looking for something, so I don't have a strong feel for what I might find there.

So what am I missing? Where should I be shopping?