I heard Andrew Loog Oldham on satellite radio the other day complaining about the near extinction of record stores. Oldham -- living up to his surname, in his best "get off my lawn" Paddington accent -- lamented having to go to Wal-Mart or iTunes for his records instead of having them sold to him "by people who care about music." I know exactly how he feels.
Before the Internet, one of the ancillary joys of travel was checking out the local record stores. Not just the Tower Record and Virgin superstores, but the idiosyncratic mom-and-pop operations that used to be found in every village of any size in this country. In those days, you could be surprised by what you'd find in the cut-out bins; by imports and (in some places) even bootleg recordings you never knew existed.
But the Internet killed the biggest dinosaurs and thinned the rest of the herd. Nowadays, if you've got a record store, the Internet is probably your "friend" in that it allows you to sell physical product to geezers like Oldham who prefer tangible souvenirs of their experience. Scramble and adapt and the Internet might let you subsist.
But we've lost some of the real pleasures of browsing -- these days it's too easy to find exactly what you're looking for on Spotify or Google. The thrill of the hunt has been sacrificed for the expedient kill.
If you want something bad enough, and it exists, then you can have it for a price (as long as your eBay friend isn't trying to scam you). Or you can just stream it, for the price of listening to a few ads or a small monthly subscription. And you don't have to be distracted by the funky and alien artifacts that you might otherwise encounter and begin to wonder about as you flip through the stacks.
We can be glad no one has found a way to digitize booze yet. And while I regret Arkansas' curious laws against received wine and liquor shipped from outside the state's borders, I understand that it -- like the similar limits placed on grocery and convenience stores -- helps protect wine and spirit shops. And as much as I'd like to be able to pick up a gallon of Evan Williams and some Yellow Tail at Kroger, I understand the delicate economics of the situation. One of my favorite liquor chains, New Zealand's Robbie Burns Cut-Rate Liquor, went under when the government there allowed grocery stores into the liquor business. And while that's by no means an unavoidable outcome -- there are plenty of places where liquor stores and wet groceries co-exist -- it would make me sad to lose a single local liquor shop.
Liquor stores are one of the last bastions of serendipitous discovery available to the inveterate browser, one of the last places where you can hope to be surprised by the shopkeeper's stock.
NEW AND IMPROVED
A new one opened near our house a few weeks ago. Well, it didn't exactly open -- it re-opened, with the same name, under new ownership. I had visited it under the old regime and found its stock thin and a little obvious. It was all right for certain staples -- if I wanted to pick up a popular brand of vodka or a California cabernet sauvignon, they'd have it -- but it was a strictly pop-in and pick-up kind of place -- not the sort of liquor store you could get lost in.
Now it's much better; its selection is deep and reflects some personality. It doesn't carry everything, but there are some interesting and arresting choices, particularly given its relatively small square footage. It's worth going in and staring at the shelves. You might run in expecting to freshen your gin supply and come out with a bottle of Lillet. It's worth hanging around in.
Whether or not this is a good business plan I don't know. It might be more profitable just to sell the cheapest intoxicants you can at the lowest prices. Most people are fine with Budweiser and Miller Lite; there are plenty of smart people who believe cultivating a taste for top-shelf liquor is kind of stupid. Even in this column I spend a lot of time talking about how a lot of the marketing and pricing of alcoholic beverages is based on wishful fables dreamed up by distillers and distributors looking to differentiate themselves.
But I happen to like liquor stores I can fruitfully browse -- and I tend to spend more money in these sorts of places.
These days when we travel, we almost invariably check out local liquor stores to compare their prices and inventories to what we have back home. We have a BevMo! card for when we're in California; we're familiar with most of the wine shops in New York's Chelsea neighborhood; and I know it's illegal for a South Carolina package store to sell you a corkscrew.
This column isn't about reviewing liquor stores (although that might be a worthy pursuit for someone out there) because that sounds tedious to me. Besides, I don't know that liquor stores are really destinations for most of us; there are four or six I frequent, and they are generally located in convenient locations, scattered along the dog trots I follow in my everyday life. A couple of them are among our state's largest stores in terms of square footage, the others are midsize or even small; but the main reason they're on my radar is because I see them all the time. (There are others I also see all the time that I need to visit -- every time I drive past them I remind myself of this, but I never seem to go in.)
And the reason I keep going back to them is because they're all -- for whatever reason -- highly browsable. I find unexpected things in them.
HELLO, OLD FRIEND
"Snobbery haunts those who are not reconciled with themselves. ... Why not be what you are?" George Santayana wrote in his essay "An Apology for Snobs," and that's a good aphorism to recall whenever someone tries to make you feel bad about liking something you like, be it the occasional Miley Cyrus track or Carlo Rossi Paisano.
For the record, I would -- given unlimited resources -- happily live at the high-end of the wine list. But just as enjoying Chateaubriand doesn't prohibit you from relishing the occasional hot dog, there's no reason to deny yourself the pleasures available in a cookout wine.
It has been years since Paisano figured prominently as our house wine (we moved on to the superior bag-in-box technology for our ordinary pours) but I was recently reminded of how refreshing, light and cheerful this screw-capped plonk (made of 100 percent grapes!) can be, and so we broke out a jug July 4.
And I'll still put it up against any number of more expensive corked Chiantis. I'm not saying you have to like it. I'm just saying I do.
And if you're going to a party where they'll be grilling meat and drinking beer, consider investing $8 in a 1.5-liter jug. For less than the price of an imported six-pack, you'll have actual wine.
Email:
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
Style on 07/06/2014