The music wouldn’t play

bp: 126/82 (yesterday)
bp: 129/87 (today)

HMV is now gone from Cleveland, which saddens but hardly surprises me. In the past month the area lost its historical best record store in (Westlake’s) My Generation. Over the past few years I’ve watched the suburban record stores fade out, the mall chains are struggling, and even some of the better online retailers have disappeared.

Lately I had only shopped at HMV during their infrequent spring cleaning sales, and even the tables of imported singles under US$3 were merely window shopping since they almost never stocked anything I wanted. They were, however, the last place in town for any kind of singles as well as being the only remaining place for imports once My Generation closed. I apparently have missed the closing day sale at the Cleveland HMV; I missed the last day sales at My Generation (although I had been there a few weeks prior; unless they substantially raised the discount, it would not have been that great).

We’re left with a dollar made substantially weaker by Bush, which makes shopping at my favourite online record stores very expensive.