Sony Retires the Walkman

According to CNN Sony has retired the Walkman cassette player. No surprise here. The thing became obsolete over a decade ago when portable CD players came out. Still, I feel the need to eulogize the device that made public transportation bearable.

Back in the late 80s/early 90s, the Walkman was what the cell phone is today: Something you never leave the house without. I guess before I continue I should be honest, I never had an actual Walkman. That's the official brand name of Sony's device. I had some knock off piece of crap made by JVC, GPX or some other knockoff brand you'd find in Radio Shack, Nobody Beats the Wiz and Sam Goody.

It's funny too, because GPX and other knockoffs always came with shitty headphones that either snapped in half, lost the spongy ear cover or only worked in one ear unless you held the cord in a certain position. Some, like the one pictured, had a radio on them that got crappy reception but was still better than the tape player itself.

Cheap ones didn't have rewind so you had to take the tape out, flip it over, fast forward a few seconds, flip it back over, play and repeat until you got to the part of the tape you wanted to hear.

As long as you didn't run, hold it sideways or move too fast, your tape would probably survive the trip outside and back home. Every now and then though (Every other day) you'd notice the music starting to slow down and sound garbled. You had a split second to hit stop and save your tape from the walkman. Then you had to pull the cassette out and sowly pull the ten miles of tape out of the machine. Next, you'd get a pencil, roll the tape back up and from that point on that one section of the tape would sound messed up.

Despite the hassle of protecting your tapes, the Walkman served its purpose. It gave me something to listen to on my way to school. Of course back then the pickings were slim. Unlike today, there was no "playlist." Hell you got 60-90 minutes of music and if you were like me you copied your songs off the radio. Sometimes, on a "good" tape, you had no commercials, no DJ and all of the songs started and stopped correctly. On a "bad" tape, maybe you didn't hit record in time. Maybe some songs cut off prematurely because you accidentally taped over them or you reached the end of the tape. And of course we all had that tape where you couldn't go past a certain point because the machine would magically eat the tape beyond that part.

Now that I think about it...good riddance Walkman! lol