Vinyl Withdrawal

I really miss record stores. I just realized the other day that there are no longer any shops that sell new music in Athens. I suppose with the advent of digital music, itunes, and mP3, the market for these sorts of stores has gone the way of the dodo. There are a few used cd places downtown, but that's it. To me, that's sad.
Before Wal-Mart came along, I can remember quite a few record stores in Athens. There was a Tower Records, or something like it, at Beechwood where Borders is now. There were two places at the mall-- I think one was called Starship Records. I can even remember looking through vinyl at the ancient department stores downtown. It was either Belks or Macy's/Davidson's because Sears was over at the aforementioned Beechwood.
I loved record stores the way I love bookstores now. There's something great and visceral about being able to lay your hands on the product while you browse. To be able to immerse yourself in different styles of music and to find new stuff that you never new existed. There would always be someone hanging around perfectly willing to tell you, "Mannnnnnn, you just gotta check this out."
I'm sure people will say that you can do all of that on the computer, but downloading music is a pain in the rear end. It's tedious and I can't shake the notion that as soon as I get all of my favorite tunes safely on an iPod, the technology will change and I'll have to do it all over again.

Call me archaic, but I'll take vinyl any day. CD's are fine too. You can have your iPod.