Realms of Imagination
Revisiting Edward McKay
There's a specific kind of used media store that seems like the backdrop for a late-90s, half animated half live action kids movie about a boy or girl that enter the store and become transported to various realms of imagination. Like The Pagemaster, but without the public library, instead a massive warehouse of used books, video games, movies, and music.
Edward McKay was a used media store on Bragg Blvd in Fayetteville, NC. It was on my commute to and from Fort Liberty (Bragg). Apparently there were branches in Raleigh, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem too that I never went to.
Until Back-Around Records came into town roughly the last year we lived in Fayetteville, there was not much in the town for record stores. There was 2nd and Charles (which eventually stocked a good selection of vinyl) and Barnes and Noble. And then there was Edward McKay.
The building on Bragg Blvd was just a corrugated aluminum box housing an enormous square footage divided into zones defined by their formats: Video Games, Textbooks, Movies, Books, Merch, Music.
The music selection was only CDs, but I didn't have a record player yet and just wanted to collect CDs for car rides to and from post.
The carpet was pea green. The HVAC system exposed. The dozens of bookcases and storage cabinets cheaply veneered and of chipboard construction, all of them tilting to the right or left.
If I got off of work early enough, I would usually stop at Edward McKay on the way home. I started buying CDs I grew up listening to and wanted to revisit. Finally my personal copy of Cracked Rear View, Forever Blue, and Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club.
Each CD was no more than $5-7. The condition was usually passable. And the genre layout conformed to an older, broad cataloging technique: Rock, Pop, Jazz, Rap, maybe Folk. Rock was where I found Leviathan. Jazz was where I found Mutations. Maybe Acadie was in Folk but probably Rock, still. The cheap cost and quick access on my commute home made Edward McKay stick out like a media mini-mart, swinging through to pickup Van Halen's 1984 like someone might grab a can of Copenhagen to restock.
This is a broad generalization, but I think used media stores that don't over do the aesthetic tend to have the best selections. Shove it all in a big warehouse, tidy it up to one step below organized, and let people come in and be bewildered. Let them hunt.
Edward McKay isn't around anymore; they closed in 2016. The utilitarian warehouse type of used media store sometimes resembles more of an archive, like a combination library / museum, but one from which you can purchase items in the collection.
Gameboy Advanced cartridges laid out under a two-shelf counter with a plexiglass case.
What seems like the world's inventory of Blu-Rays.
Aisles between bookshelves so tight you have to go out and around to look at the other side if someone is perched in the middle.
And "new to me" CDs to swipe for only a few dollars and stack on the passenger's seat of my Nissan Versa.
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