RETAIL / TOURISM : Fraternity Brothers Base New Business on a Sound Idea

When two UC Irvine fraternity brothers began thinking about starting a business, they had to look no farther than down the hall for inspiration. After all, what is more natural to fraternity life than bars and music?

So David Hurwitz and Jeff Walker combined the two, opening the CD Listening Bar last December on Doheny Park Road in San Juan Capistrano. But don’t expect to be able to step up for a tall cold one. Even though there is a “bartender,” this bar does not serve drinks--only music on compact discs.

Customers can plop down into one of eight seats along the 35-foot bar and listen to the songs of their choice, played through headphones. The store, naturally, also sells CDs.

To appeal to the environmentally conscious, Hurwitz and Walker have gone a step further. They have eliminated the “long box,” the 6-inch-by-12-inch cardboard box for CDs, which has been derided in the music industry as wasteful. Instead, they display CDs in a smaller, 6-inch-square, plastic “jewel box.”

“People nowadays are really conscious of waste and they never understood why (compact discs) were in the other box in the first place,” Hurwitz said. “People say it makes sense not to waste cardboard.”

The pair say they are only the second CD store in California to spurn the long box entirely and display CDs only in the smaller packages. And, they say, customer response has been good.