seanshannon.org

Media Play Memories
posted 2006/01/07 at 18:51

Yesterday I went over to one of the Media Play stores, and they're definitely getting down to the dregs over there in terms of available stuff. I didn't walk out with anything there, and I doubt the other store has anything I want at this point either, but I'll still go over there anyway just to check and to be there one last time.

Media Play may just be a chain of stores -- and a nationally-run chain at that -- but for the nearly twelve years that Media Play's been in Toledo, it's amazing how many memories I have tied to them. I've mentioned some of these before, but I think they're worth mentioning again:

The first time I ever went to the "big" Media Play (near Toledo's dominant mall), it was in the middle of a school day to see David Lanz give a quickie concert in support of his Bridge of Dreams tour. (Paul Speer was there as well, but he never played; it was just David and his piano.) I even got David to sign one of my books of his sheet music.
Chantelle Marshall, my childhood crush, worked as a cashier at Media Play on her summers off from Brown.
Media Play was where I picked up my first anime ever -- the first episode of Bubblegum Crisis -- on VHS.
Although I eventually ordered the complete boxed set of the Oh My Goddess! OVA from AnimEigo directly, I saw the first three episodes from a friend who bought the tapes from that same Media Play. When the DVDs of the OVA came out (volume one and volume two, as well as the movie, the four volumes of Mini-Goddess (one, two, three and four) and the two volumes of the TV series that have been released so far (volume one and volume two), I picked them up at Media Play.
The night that Media Play stayed open until midnight so everyone could pick up copies of Elton John's "Candle in the Wind '97" as soon as it came out, I got the employees there to go to the back and grab me another album that they could sell to me after midnight as it had now technically just been released: Björk's Homogenic. Yeah, so that's my favourite anime series of all time and my favourite album of all time right there. Media Play was always a few days slow on getting new video games, though, so I picked up Final Fantasy at a nearby Toys'R'Us.
I wrote about a shopping trip I took to Media Play to help me get over the anxiety of my post-IWC life in the first .journal entry ever on the .org.
After the fire at the house, I finally discovered the other Media Play in town was less than a mile from the hotel, in a building that used to house a Builders Square. (Builders Square was the Home Depot of the '80s, but they went out of business in Toledo pretty quickly.) That Media Play was smaller than the other one, but it carried different things, and it was at the "small" Media Play that I found my Belldandy figurine.
Lastly, Media Play was where I picked up my first piece of DDR equipment: a cheapo PS2 dance mat. (They were out of games at the time -- this was the weekend before Christmas -- so I had to pick up a game at Best Buy).

Like I said, there are lots of memories there, and honestly it's kind of painful to see Media Play go. Especially now that our big local record store and bookstore have bitten the dust, I may wind up getting everything off of Amazon from now on.