HMV Megastore

Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

When I lived back in the wilds of the interior of British Columbia, Kelowna to be exact, one of the must hit stores on any trip to Vancouver was the Virgin Megastore on Robson. Back in Kelowna we just had a crappy little HMV in the mall and an A&B Sound, so I loved the selection Virgin offered.

Even now during what we might call the iTunes years where all my music shopping happens through Apple’s music store, I still took a weekly trip into the Megastore to pick up import singles, DVDs, graphic novels and all sorts of other pop culture goodies.

Then Richard Branson’s empire rode away on his balloon and closed down shop. HMV took over the space, opening a HMV “Megastore”. I use quotations because it’s really just a big version of their mall stores. More selection? Nope, just more of the same.

Virgin obviously was never a Vancouver based Mom and Pop record shop, but it was still part of the Vancouver experiance.

My heart breaks a little everytime I walk by it, which maybe means I’m a wuss.

HMV Virgin records Vancouver Robson