Post #260918 by Coco Loco on Sun, Oct 15, 2006 3:01 PM

I'm sad that Tower's going out of business. Though, it's probably based on my perspective as a SF East Bay Area native. Tower's been a staple in the general Bay Area forever, before Virgin Records, and Blockbuster, Wherehouse, et al. Generally, yes, overall, the cool local stores couldn't compete with Towers corporate clout. However, in the East Bay, it was unique.

For decades, in Berkeley (CA), Tower Records, Rasputin's, and Leopolds, and later Amoeba records all unofficially competed with each other over who had the most eclectic, deep collection of music. One could go into any of those stores and pretty much find anything. The employees took arrogant pride in their music knowledge and store portfolios. Ever see High Fidelity...Jack Black could have fit into any of these stores, including Tower. The employees were/are a collection of musicians, music lovers, alternative advocates, and people who deeply knew their respective music niches. Yeah, I know that many of the Towers were evil corporate, but growing up in the Bay Area, we were really privileged to have a great Tower Records and other local music stores who co-existed with them.

The ironic end to this story: Rasputin's and Amoeba (the single location local stores) ended up beating the pants off of the eclectic and deep cataloged Berkeley Tower Records. Tower no longer exists in Berkeley. Rasputin's and Amoeba still stand strong and now have multiple locations.

[ Edited by: coco loco 2006-10-15 15:08 ]