Hometown music store closing - depressed

[bigcatJC]

My local music store, Hames Music, is closing Saturday. This is the place where my parents bought my first bass all those years ago. Every major piece of gear I ever had came from them. Now the doors are shutting.

The store began to go downhill a few years ago when they were bought out. The new management didn't handle things as well as the Hames brothers did, and now it's over. So many memories of that place.

When Hames was at its biggest, it was a great place to just hang and shoot the breeze, even when I wasn't buying anything that day. I got to know so many good people who worked there. And I was introduced to high-quality bass gear there: Alembic, Pedulla, Ernie Ball, Warwick, Trace Elliot, Kubicki...too many to name. And there was always great used gear coming in and out on a regular basis - you could always find something cool you never saw before. The last time I went in, they didn't have anything you couldn't buy from your every-day internet sites. And that's what's got me torn.

Part of me wants to go for the last day, just because. But part of me doesn't. It isn't the same store. The same staff isn't there. Seeing what Hames became makes me feel even worse.

So I'll raise my glass to what used to be. Hames Music was a magical part of my teens and twenties before it changed. What it was can't be replaced by Guitar Center or Musician's Friend. Goodbye to a piece of my past. Hard to imagine you could get so emotional about a store closing, but I have.

[Thombas]

I hear you. A lot of the stores here are suffering here too. They tend to be a kind of "show room" where people try stuff out, just to go home and buy it 10% over the internet, from a place that doesn't have the cost of running an actual store.

[enricogaletta]

Unfortunately for small stores is really hard to be competitive with big company and their recent marketing policy. If they in some way don't update, don't have real chances to survive. It's just like for CD stores, who don't find new way to be "unique" ot to have a valid reasons to keep people buy from them, can't survive to the giants or to the ecommerce. Sad to say but is the evolution.
Cheers. Enrico
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[SBsoundguy]

I think if a company doesn't sell online they're only digging themselves into a hole. Rondo seems to do very well.

[jelwood]

It sounds to me, that when the Hames brothers sold their place to the new (bad) management...THAT was when your store died. It's been gone for a while. Nothing to be sad about here.