Whenever I go to a new city, whether visiting or vacationing, I would always make that a point to get to the record store early on, just to get my bearings and see what was going on around town.
It's a great meeting place, community center, art gallery, singles bar, music venue. The record store really covers a lot of ground.
Certainly, R.E.M. grew out of the Wuxtry record store in Athens, where Peter Buck was working and Michael Stipe came in to visit. And even their later manager, Bertis Downs, they all met and congregated at that record store. So I'm sure we wouldn't see those without the record store.