Shops

[Corpsey]

Just saw a Facebook post by HMV, must be an advert cos I don't follow them on Facebook, I didn't even know it still exists.

It made me a bit sad, though, because I assume they're struggling. Eeking out the last few years before collapse. Not sure if HMV was ever a particularly down to earth business but I do miss walking around it flicking through hundreds of CDs in a vain attempt to find anything that looked interesting. Sigh.

What shops do you go into nowadays? About the only shop I semi-regularly frequent in London is Foyles, which is pretty soulless actually now I come to think of it.

 

[craner]

Shops?

 

[craner]

This is your idea for a thread?

 

[version]

Corpse's water filters moment.

 

[craner]

I don't know, maybe it's the best one you've ever had.

 

[Leo]

Brutal takedown. Like a baby smothered in its blanket.

 

[version]

Not sure if HMV was ever a particularly down to earth business but I do miss walking around it flicking through hundreds of CDs in a vain attempt to find anything that looked interesting.

I've always hated this. Get wound up by aimless browsing.

 

[craner]

Foyles lost its soul as soon as I exited the building.

 

[version]

Craner has left the building.

 

[craner]

Everybody is weeping.

 

[version]

One of the discussions that's come up in response to the decline of the high street is how to make visiting an actual shop some sort of experience that can't be replicated online.

I remember going to Games Workshop as a kid and there'd be people who would hang around in there all day, painting miniatures and playing 40k. It was kind of fun, but even then I always felt they were a bit weird, excitable guys with ponytails and fleeces and camo trousers. Wagner on the stereo.

 

[Corpsey]

This is your idea for a thread?

It will bear fruit I think

 

[Corpsey]

Shop stories, a new award winning podcast from the makers of tell us about times you shit yourself

 

[luka]

This is your idea for a thread?

hes a fucking idiot

 

[version]

Corpse seems more shop-oriented than the rest of the forum, although that Deleuze thread did end up getting derailed with talk of Spar onion rings.

 

[version]

Baron von Corpsey samples the Asda experience.

I suppose the "more than human" thing is what the machine is selling as an ideal. Whether or not its true doesn't matter.

Apologies if I've been cloth-eared.

I have been thinking about this stuff in the last few weeks as I've just moved to an area of London where the juxtaposition of middle-class comfort and working-class ... can't think of a good word for this... I don't want to say squalor, but it's something like that. Anyway, those two states of life are right up against each other.

This will sound appropriately pathetic, but I went into an Asda the other day (which I'd normally be too snobby to go in) and it all seemed nice, but then I picked up some cookies that were reduced but turned out to be completely stale, and the contactless machine took ages to work (I am ashamed to be typing this) - and it was just a little indication of "oh, when you have this much less to spend your life is just less likely to run as smoothly as I'm used to".

For the last four/five years I've been living in an area of London which is pretty much all middle-class families, very green, insulated in large part against poverty. And I can see that my attitude to politics has been effected by this.

There's also a fascinating repulsion I feel towards poverty - fascinating in that I can see why people erect mental barriers against believing it can really be that bad, or that its worth thinking about that, because its viscerally different to being comfortable, it's not somewhere you want to be.

 

[luka]

that post was fucking mental. it's always stuck in my mind.

 

[luka]

38 year old man goes into Asda for the first time in his whole life

 

[version]

"I don't want to say squalor, but . . . "

 

[luka]

surprised at the existence of poor and unsightly people, like the Buddha coming out of his compound for the first time