hitting up second-hand bookstores and record stores used to be this miraculous process of discovering things you'd read *about* but never got to experience
i hate to have one of these at all but my big "WE DRANK FROM THE HOSE" opinion is that people younger than millennials really can't imagine what coming of age in a time of media scarcity meant - like, I would read about records and movies and not actually be able to see them for YEARS
Having to wait for the DJ to announce the name of the song, then scrawling it on a piece of paper, and then *eventually* going to the various record stores to see what was available. Alternately, recording five hours of radio on a reel-to-reel tape and then transferring liked songs to cassette.
Just reflected on this yesterday when I suddenly realized that I could just easily listen to the whole Flaming Lips catalogue easily instead of waiting for new albums and searching it out
Like the fact that I can access hundreds of hours of obscure Nigerian jazz with my pocket computer is obviously an improvement but there was something to that process of discovery that I get wistful for
I used to work in a music store until I was maybe 20 or 21 and this was part of what made it the COOLEST job. People were jealous as hell that I got to work there.
i miss the process. japan's weird small retail sector is the closest thing we have that I know of, it's the only place it's fun to just go shopping
used to make fun of how "backwards" japan was in internet stuff but now i find it enjoyable. unless you're forced to use a japan website for something
the unbridled joy of finding out a new frank herbert (in my case) book you didn't even know existed, because there weren't 50 websites that just offered lists as content
Two of my Gav bookstores.
One bought your books from you at 1/4 of the price and you bought books from them at 1/2.
The other was a lunch type restaurant, walls covered in books. and you got to take one with you when you finished eating.
One of the maths topics that I've been pursuing on and off as a researcher for > 15 years was something I saw in an article in a journal, which I only found because it was in the same volume as an article I needed for something else but had to go and read in physical form in library stacks
Don’t forget the feeling of discovering something no one else knew about. You sometimes just grabbed an album on the random chance it might be a hidden gem.
I remember browsing through the album racks and not knowing that the artists or the cover of the record looked like -- there was no pre-release publicity so you just didn't know
I remember going to buy I Will Survive album and realizing Gloria Gaynor was black -- who knew? (actually it was obvious)
You'd go to a smaller underground/indie concert and there were allways people first selling cassette tapes and then CD's of interesting music from smaller bands you'd never hear of otherwise. Now it's much much easier to discover new music albeit it was a bit better 3-5 years ago
Still love to go into those little shops on festivals and go through those giant boxes with CD's and records . Hell sometimes you still can even buy cassette albeit not sure how i'd play them and the format is just awful.
