Staying open can cost indie shops a pretty Penny

What a harsh few weeks this has been.

First, my beloved Houston Astros, in the most offensively inept
performance I’ve ever seen, treated home plate as though it
were covered with bird flu during the World Series. Then, just days
later, I suffered a series of bizarre allergy attacks that
necessitated a trip to the emergency room. The only way this
nightmarish scenario could’ve gotten any worse is if, say,
Penny Lane, Westwood’s last independent record store, went
out of business or something.

Yeah … about that.

I first heard of Penny Lane’s closure while walking to
class Nov. 1, when I saw the front page of that day’s Daily
Bruin. All at once, I was shocked, angry and sad. Shocked because I
had no idea the store was closing (I had been in Penny Lane the
week before, and there were no signs of the shop’s impending
closure); angry because people weren’t shopping at such a
unique store; and sad because another indie store had just gone
belly-up. It was at that moment that I decided to devote this
column to Penny Lane’s demise.

Now, I could sit here and go on a lengthy diatribe condemning
corporate America and chiding lazy college students for choosing
chains such as Best Buy over Penny Lane, and initially that is what
this column was going to be about. But as I considered Penny
Lane’s closure and the reasons behind it, playing the blame
game wasn’t so easy.

I hate to be a pessimist, but no one should be surprised that
the store went out of business. When you consider that its main
competition was the enormous electronics behemoth Best Buy on Le
Conte Avenue and Amoeba Music a few miles down the road, it’s
amazing Penny Lane even survived this long.

It’s easy to rip people for not shopping at an independent
record store, but upon further inspection, the financial joke is on
the indie store-goer. For instance, I bought the New
Pornographers’ “Twin Cinema” when it came out in
August and got it for about $8 at Best Buy. The same day I was in
Penny Lane and saw the album going for over $15.

It’s really not fair, but Best Buy is such a huge company
that it can afford to gouge prices (such as the Mars Volta’s
“Frances the Mute” going for less than $7 back in
March) while Penny Lane was forced to sell at higher prices just to
show a profit. Can you really get on someone’s case for not
spending double the price to buy an album from an indie store? If
you ask me, that’s like paying an “indie tax,”
and how many indie consumers really have that much extra cash to
throw around?

This is all without even getting into the realm of music
downloading, which kills a store like Penny Lane far more than it
does Best Buy. Sure, they both lose money as CD sales plummet, but
Best Buy (aside from being a corporate behemoth) has numerous other
avenues to fall back on, including, ironically, iPods and digital
music players.

It’s depressing that things have reached this point, but
when you really think about it, the only “indie” record
store that can possibly survive in today’s environment is
Amoeba. And honestly, does anyone really view a sprawling musical
palace on Sunset Boulevard with an inventory of 2 million records
as an indie store?

The sad truth of today’s world is that this is just the
way it is, and there isn’t a whole lot that people can do to
stop it. When stores such as Best Buy can undercut the competition
so substantially and music is available for free online (provided
you can find it), the plight of the indie record store only
worsens.

And really, I don’t know anyone with cajones (much less a
wallet) big enough to spend double the price on every CD just to
keep an indie record store’s head above water.

Humphrey’s biggest fear is that competition from
Ralph’s and Chevron will force ExpressMart to close its doors
next. If you share his concern, e-mail him at
mhumphrey@media.ucla.edu.

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