Turn out the lights
    (Duh! Duh!)
Turn out the lights
    (Duh! Duh!)
Turn out the liiiiiiiights!
    (Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh!)

Well, that’s it for a Midtown Mall icon.  Who could have believed that Record Theater had been there 45 years?  Who could have believed Midtown Mall was there 45 years?

Even if the quality of the selection and the store’s facade had worn down considerably in recent years, it was always a place worth stopping by whenever I had occasion to go into Midtown.  Here again is a classic example of the importance of Midtown as a community center and shopping plaza writ in a small hand:

Record Theatre closes downtown after 45 years || Democrat & Chronicle: Business

Michelle Zingo of Rochester called the news “extremely depressing.”

The 29-year-old was shopping at the Record Theatre on Friday morning. Zingo said she could always find new and used rock and R& B compact disks at a good price.

Jerry Benjamin also praised Record Theatre’s prices and selection. Benjamin, 34, had shopped at the store since 1991, buying R&B CDs and audio tapes. “I’m going to miss this store,” he said. “Now, I’m going to have to go farther out to the malls.”

Jeff Adams, the owner of Jeff’s Books and the Village Yarn Shop in Midtown, said the store would be missed.

Adams, who was in Record Theatre browsing through CDs, said: “It certainly is unfortunate, not only for the mall but for the people who shop here.”

There are precious few reasons to shop at the mall these days, and despite this, it’s obvious that people still do.  Rather than making alternate plans to attract suburbanites back into the mall, perhaps it is time we contemplated the reason that there are those who remain.

When most of us think of most malls, we tend to think of them as locations of choice; sometimes, people even draw certain conclusions about you if you shop at Eastview over Greece-Town Mall.  The portion of Midtown’s clientele that chooses to shop there for such reasons has long-since gone away, and what remains are people who work in the area, live in the area or for one reason or another find that Midtown is the easier option on the rare occasion that it fulfills a need.

In short, it is a community center of sorts, even if (or perhaps because) no one planned for it to be.

Technorati Tags: Midtown, Record Theater, Economy

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