The Death of the Walkman: A Eulogy

Recently, I had the urgent desire to buy myself a Walkman wanting to play my old Susan Vega's cassette tape, "Nine Desire." I set off one Saturday morning sure that my what I was searching for would be easily found, how wrong I was. Of course, I know that most people now use CD players and iPods to listen to music but I had thought that there was still a place for the Walkman in people's hearts.

In my quest to find myself a Walkman, Walgreens was my first and, I thought, my best bet, figuring although Walgreens was not Wal-mart, in terms of offering every material good a person could possibly want, it would do just fine. It turns out I was wrong.

Not wanting to bore readers with all the places I visited and or how disappointing it was to be continually told, "We don't have that in stock' or conversing with store clerks whose glance said, "Do people even buy Walkmans anymore? Do people actually sell them anymore." I can only say that I left each store feeling discouraged, but not overly so.

I eventually found a clerk at the Family Dollar store who told me that my best and, as I recall, now my fourth bet, would be to go to Target. Knowing that the closest Target store was about a mile and a half from me, I suck it up and decided to go. I wanted a Walkman that day and was determined to get one. At Target, after being easily distracted by the women's apparel and lingerie section, not too mention the houseware section, I headed over to Target's electronics and not immediately seeing what I sought my heart started to drop. Then I saw it, yes an actual Walkman and the final price, $10. 25.

Happy, content and once again at home, I immediately started to play Susan Vega's, Nine Desire" and I started to wonder if people no longer use the Walkman to listen to music, in essence is the Walkman dead? According to Pocketcalculatorshow.com, "The Walkman craze began in Japan and reached the US by 1980 and by 1983 everyone was shopping for a Walkman." When looking at what has happened to the music industry and the way music is bought and sold and now can be downloaded off the Internet, plus CD players and the iPods, the Walkman's inevitable demise will continue.