Half Price Books

A post from Dale:

One of the things that I personally wanted to achieve on this trip was to locate at least one VHS store. I had some amazing people based in Texas informing me that Austin was the place to be for such a store. My mind instantly dreamed up images of the Alamo Drafthouse and the Mondo shop, movie posters and t-shirts, along with all other cool things that my fragile mind has yet to see in America.

Unfortunately we were headed to Texas from Little Rock which meant that Austin would have been almost four hours out of the way, and then four hours back up to our planned route. I do promise to visit Austin in the not too distant future though, the place sounds incredible.

I made a polite plea to all movie lovers in the Dallas area as that was the planned destination in Texas. I had some great suggestions back from the land of Twitter concerning my beloved cassette tapes and after a long day we headed straight for a little place that I now like to call home, that place is called Half Price Books by the lucky locals.

We arrived at about 7pm (it's open until 11pm) and pulled up on the car park outside. We then burst through the wonder emporium's doors in a similar style to Arnie and Sinbad in Jingle All The Way. Turbo Man is not on our minds in this little treasure hunt though.

Simon went his own way, running towards the movie soundtrack section and I went mine, skipping all the way to the VHS shelves and almost knocking over a sweet old lady in the process.

I cannot describe in enough words just how amazing the store is. Vintage books line the walls. VHS are all stored in alphabetical order. It's as if I never left home. CDs, LPs, Laserdiscs, DVDs - you name it. It's all inside all under one roof.

Although the tapes are NTSC over here, the artwork on some was just too good to turn down, so I grabbed a few. I then dragged my many treasures towards the checkout. I looked like a girl scout pulling her cookies around the neighbourhood.

The legend behind the counter also gave me a free cassette style gift card which looks pretty cool. I'd like to think his name was Earl or something great like that. A huge shout out must go to @ReelDistraction for the suggestion and also the whole of Dallas for housing such an incredible store.

I have also left a little something in one of the VHS tapes for a lucky local to find and pass on. I'm sure 'U' can find it if you look hard enough.