CD World, we love you. CD Source, you're all right, too. In fact, we have a special place in our heart for independent music stores the world over. But sometimes the big red letters of the Virgin sign are just too much to resist. Corporate America may be cold and impersonal--some would even say evil--but it also employs a slew of marketing geniuses. The listening stations at Virgin Megastore in Mockingbird Station are just one example. Whether your tastes are for rock, country, dance, jazz or gospel, Virgin has it all. Slip on the headphones, press play and you'll almost forget that you're browsing the aisles of a mega-rich megastore. One drawback, though: We're convinced the headphones are rigged, because more than once we've fallen in love at the listening station only to wake up the next morning with a CD in our changer that seems to have lost its luster. Maybe corporate America is evil.
Readers' Pick
CD World
2706 E. Mockingbird Lane, #110
214-826-1885
In Hollister you will find the faded, tightly fitted ironic/retro/vaguely California T-shirts and washed, tattered jeans that are the rage among the young and hip. Some of the jeans, however, don't come off the racks; they're tied to the pair before them, which are, in turn, tied to the pair before them. So you ask permission to try them on, which brings the sales associates--beautiful, young, hip and eager to help--into the mix. These people want you to become them and suggest ways to achieve this end. Everything's overpriced, but for the sake of hipness, you buy. Or you don't. In Hollister, you either congratulate yourself on your coolness--if nothing else, Hollister's cool--or you look at the means by which you could reach coolness, and you walk out the door. Because acting cool is, duh, acting young. Does a 30-year-old want to dress as 17-year-olds do, even if the shirts are retro and remind the 30-year-old of shirts he wore at 17? Does a 25-year-old woman want to shop next to a 14-year-old boy? And why is it so dark in Hollister? Are there teenagers and college kids making out somewhere?