{"id":713,"date":"2006-10-31T00:42:04","date_gmt":"2006-10-31T04:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/31\/vacation-note-2-tower-records-going-out-of-business-sale-c\/"},"modified":"2006-10-31T08:55:26","modified_gmt":"2006-10-31T12:55:26","slug":"vacation-note-2-tower-records-going-out-of-business-sale-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/vacation-note-2-tower-records-going-out-of-business-sale-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacation Note #2: Tower Records Going Out Of Business Sale, &#038;c"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been coming to Boston several times a year for work for something like 13 years now. There are several pockets of the greater Boston area that I know really, really well.<\/p>\n<p>One such pocket is <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=d&#038;hl=en&#038;saddr=waltham+ma&#038;daddr=burlington+ma&#038;ie=UTF8&#038;z=12&#038;ll=42.438407,-71.228485&#038;spn=0.170774,0.247192&#038;om=1\">the area between exits 27 (Waltham) and 32b (Burlington) on I-95<\/a> (or &#8220;the 128&#8221; when you talk to natives.)<\/p>\n<p>In the 13 years I&#8217;ve been coming here it&#8217;s been pretty rare for a trip to go by that I didn&#8217;t stop in for a quick look around the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tower_Records\">Tower Records<\/a> store<footnote>I don&#8217;t know how long this link will stay up, but the store page is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.towerrecords.com\/stores\/store.asp?storeID=t17191\">here<\/a>.<\/footnote> near the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.simon.com\/mall\/default.aspx?ID=146\">Burlington Mall<\/a>. Over the years the amount I spent on these visits dropped dramatically, as the rise of online ordering changed the nature of the visits from &#8220;buy all the stuff I just can&#8217;t get at home&#8221; to &#8220;pick up anything that looks interesting enough to eat the cost difference from buying it online&#8221;. (And, in fact, it was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newburycomics.com\/\">Newbury Comics<\/a> store on the other side of the parking lot that got more of my &#8220;I&#8217;m willing to pay the opportunity cost to have this CD now&#8221; spending, since they tended to have a selection that more closely matched my eclecticism.)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2006\/10\/burlington191.jpg\" width=\"202\" height=\"176\" alt=\"Tower Records Burlington\" title=\"Tower Records Burlington\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Well, whether my spending patterns mirror those of others, or whether for some other reasons entirely<footnote>I believe this is where the RIAA would say &#8220;downloading&#8221;, although I really think it&#8217;s more about Amazon.<\/footnote>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogcritics.org\/archives\/2006\/10\/07\/235203.php\">Tower has effectively gone out of business<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I had heard about this, but when I pulled into the parking lot this afternoon and saw the store plastered with &#8220;EVERYTHING MUST GO&#8221; and &#8220;GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE&#8221;, I admit I was a bit shocked. Not that I care one way or the other whether Tower stays in business, but just because this was something that had been an unchanging part of my experience of the area.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, once that shock wore off, I popped in to see what kind of &#8220;going out of business sale&#8221; deals I could get.<\/p>\n<p>I am pleased to report that among a whole pile of deals I got two things that really stand out as &#8220;whatta bargoon!&#8221; items: the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Criterion_Collection\">Criterion Collection<\/a> DVDs of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ruling-Class-Criterion-Collection\/dp\/B00005O3V8\">The Ruling Class<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Naked-Criterion-Collection-Mike-Leigh\/dp\/B000A88EV4\">Naked<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ruling-Class-Criterion-Collection\/dp\/B00005O3V8\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2006\/10\/Ruling%2Cjpg.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" alt=\"The Ruling Class\" title=\"The Ruling Class\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Naked-Criterion-Collection-Mike-Leigh\/dp\/B000A88EV4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2006\/10\/Naked.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" alt=\"Naked\" title=\"Naked\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll write some more detailed reviews of these later, but they have both been on my list of things I must own, and getting them both new for less than it would have cost me to get either of them used (if I could even find them&#8211;Criterion is sometime weird that way) certainly didn&#8217;t hurt.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I should also note that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.softskull.com\/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-36-5\">the new edition<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.martinmillar.com\/\">Martin Millar<\/a>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.martinmillar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk\/int\/good.html\">Good Fairies of New York<\/a> is out. I am pleased to have bought it instantly, and will probably read it (and not for the first time) before sleeping tonight.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.softskull.com\/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-36-5\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2006\/10\/GoodFairies300.gif\" width=\"200\" height=\"315\" alt=\"Good Fairies\" title=\"Good Fairies\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">I&#8217;ve been coming to Boston several times a year for work for something like 13 years now. There are several pockets of the greater Boston area that I know really, really well. One such pocket is the area between exits 27 (Waltham) and 32b (Burlington) on I-95 (or &#8220;the 128&#8221; when you talk to natives.) In the 13 years I&#8217;ve&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/vacation-note-2-tower-records-going-out-of-business-sale-c\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-bv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}