College-Town Record Stores Shuttering

You need a college, of course, but that's not the only ingredient in a good college town. You need quirky bookstores. Coffee shops _ preferably not all chains. A diner. An artsy cinema. A dive bar.

There's one other thing you need, and it's getting harder to find: a local record store. The kind of place with poster-covered walls, tattoo-covered customers, and an indie-rock aficionado at the cash register, somebody in a retro T-shirt who helps you navigate the store's eclectic inventory.

A few years ago on just one block of Chapel Hill's Franklin Street, the main drag in what's been called America's ideal college town, four or five such places catered both …