In the past two and half years we have seen the demise of Aron's Records, Tower Records , The Virgin Megastore on Sunset, Sea Level Records, and Rhino Records in Los Angeles. The tradition of combing the stacks for a rare find, donning oversized foam-padded headphones at the listening station, and spending hours roaming the aisles trying to remember what's on your "must listen to" list is fading, or obsolete, for most of us......

Photo of inside Acres of Books by LWY via Flickr Ray Bradbury once called Long Beach's Acres of Books "a labyrinth, a tomb, a catacomb, a maze," and "a watering hole" of bookish treasures. The store, founded in 1934 by Bertrand Smith, has spanned over an acre of land at its Long Beach Boulevard storefront since 1960. But now "owners Phil and Jackie Smith have agreed to sell the 12,000-square-foot lot for about $2.8......

You may have seen this ad-mural go up at Melrose & Fairfax. It's part of clothing company 55DSL's viral-ad-whatever-the-fuck-it-is campaign to get people applying for a new job opportunity. The job: travel around the world in 55DSL clothes, or, as they say, "roam the earth and find all that is good and pure and kick ass." The application: a video application 1:55 seconds long. But if you plan on staying on planet Los Angeles......

I've got a conundrum, folks. You might, too: In a study entitled "The End of the Music Industry As We Know It" (suggested subhead: "And consumers feel fine"), Forrester Research, Inc., is reporting that half of music sales will be digital by 2011, and digital sales will surpass CDs entirely by 2012. It should be pretty clear to everyone that the CD is beginning to go the way of the VHS tape - even......

Anyone living downtown in an old converted warehouse is familiar with the specific brand of glee the comes with learning that the big empty retail space on the groundfloor of your building or across the street from your front door has finally been filled. In a downtown that is still growing and adding services for the ever-expanding resident population, any new service is met with excitement. As in: Will it be a Trader Joe's? Imagine,......

RIP Tower Records building on Sunset: 1971-2008 The fate of the empty Tower Records store on Sunset Boulevard has been decided: Demolition. Yesterday it was announced that the once-iconic yellow-and-red building at 8801 W. Sunset on the Strip would meet its un-maker, as it is being razed by a Chicago-based developer in order to build a multi-use office building slated to boast a gym and retail shops. Though by no means an architectural wonder,......

LAist Featured Photos Pool contributor nailmaker shares with us this eerie pic of the empty listening stations inside the Virgin Megastore on Sunset that has now closed its doors forever. Though many people see the big-box music store as a dinosaur in this age of the mp3 download, for Angelenos who frequented this West Hollywood retail cornerstone, the end is still a little bittersweet. Our photographer explains:West Hollywood, CA / 1.20.08. Music listening station......

An opinion piece in today's LA Times raises the issue of what seems to be the rampant Pinkberry-fication of many of our local neighborhoods, using recent food and retail closings and openings in the popular Larchmont Village as an example of how major-chain development affects the unique vibe of a given area. Larchmont Village, which is the bustling strip of shops located on Larchmont Boulevard between Beverly Boulevard and 1st Street, is starting to......

Our friends over at Austinist asked us to pass along this casting call for Lucky magazine--one of their writers, Breanna, made the cut and will be striking a pose in the mag's glossy pages come March '08--and now they're looking for some lovely Angeleno ladies for a local shoot. Could you be one of them? The shoot is going to take place here in Los Angeles on Friday, January 4th. According to their press info,......

As winds died down Sunday, firefighters gained the upper hand on the Malibu blaze that burned at least 49 homes and sent thousands fleeing. It is now 70% contained and officials expect full containment by Tuesday. The damage could run close to $100 million. Firefighters rescued a father and his 4-year-old son in a Sun Valley home that burned down this morning. The father got his wife and daughter out of the house, but,......

The NoHo Arts District is looking up as the opening of the NoHo 14 Lofts nears and the arrival (finally!) of the two-story Bank Heist restaurant/bar. Small steps, small steps, right? Well, yesterday, the "Metro board approved negotiating with Lowe Enterprises for [a $1 billion development] massive mixed-use project," according to the Daily News today. Christened as the NoHo Art Wave, the development located over and around the Metro Orange and Red Line stations will......

In order to appease the overwhelming influx of dissatisfied early adopter iPhone customers, Steve Jobs has issued an open letter addressing the $200 qualm. Although the logistics seem to be in the works, Jobs has decided to offer $100 of store credit to those who bought the iPhone through either AT&T or Apple without a rebate or any other consideration whatsoever: Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from......

After much anticipation, this afternoon marked the opening day of Chicago's Intelligentsia Coffee in Silver Lake at their new Sunset Junction location. I've been looking forward to this opening since the announcement of their arrival some months ago, mainly because after falling in love with their bean roasts while on vacation in the Windy City last year, ordering bags of beans for home brewing via the internets was getting to cost me a pretty penny.......

Some may ask why Ghettogloss wants to have some douche walking around in a gorilla suit every Thursday, but we at LAist accept it for what it is: another excuse to be ridiculous in Silver Lake. This Ghettogloss place describes themselves as a "Fine Art Gallery, Art Rentals, Retail Store & More". But we can only assume when they say more, they mean some poor guy sweating it out in a gorilla suit so......

It may have been a secret known only to a few bold individuals but for many years, Costco has had one of the most liberal return policies on electronics in the business. And that, apparently, was the problem. Spurred on by losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the LA Times is reporting that Costo will halt its very liberal return policy this week. In the past, you could purchase anything......

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Offering low-cost clothing to slim-hipped wastrels isn't easy, and Swedish clothing chain H&M strives to stay on the cutting-edge of cutting costs. Competing in a cutthroat global marketplace, the company has found that budgetary consciousness doesn't only apply to the factory floor, it can extend to the highest reaches of the corporate machine thanks to the advances of the computer age. To that end H&M is the first major retailer to deploy the PR-Bot......

Lines stretched around the block. Helicopters buzzed overhead. It was madness today at the grand opening of the Pasadena H&M, the first H&M retail outlet in Southern California. Tucked between the Tiffany and Apple stores on Colorado Boulevard, the warehouse-like space showcases on two floors H&M's womenswear line. Sorry gents, ladies only. You'll have to wait until the Oct. 26 opening of the Beverly Center H&M. Half an hour before the official noon opening......

LAist Rants are strictly the opinions of the author in question. Uncanny as it is, they are written in first person! We keep them on Sundays because even the hive mind needs a rest. I always had them in my car trunk with good intentions. Though, for years, I would forget to use them and give myself the obligatory mental swift kick in the arse, each and every time at the grocery store check......

We've been waiting, watching, and wondering in our NoHo Arts District neighborhood about plans to redevelop sad parcels of land into mixed-use metropolitan sites. The opening of the Metro Red Line in 2001 held the promise of continuing development, but there were stalls and delays, and little progress was seen initially. Recently we've noticed a flurry of construction on nearby streets (high-rise buildings) and now there are signs declaring the impending arrival of the......

Another Southern California trendsetter has passed away. According to the August 19, 2004 issue of Women's Wear Daily: "Retail innovator Marcia Israel-Curley, the founder of the young women’s specialty retailer Judy’s, died Tuesday morning of a stroke. She was 83, according to longtime friend Warren Cowan. Also a civic leader and philanthropist, Israel-Curley was best known for creating the Van Nuys, Calif., chain that revolutionized the way young, fashion-hungry women in California shopped for......

Following the recent successful community campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of Inglewood, Los Angeles continues to move ahead in the effort to mitigate the “Wal-Mart effect.” Thirteen of the fifteen members of the Los Angeles City Council support a proposed law that calls for certain superstores to perform additional fiscal and social due diligence. If it passes on Tuesday, the ordinance will require an economic study that “would forecast whether a proposed store would......