Sorry but hanging out at a guitar store and feeling superior and complaining about the tunes is for losers. If you got all the taste you say you do you should be home practicing. Light one candle man.
I am not going to argue the point at all. Folks should be encouraged to play guitar and check out stuff in guitar stores. It’s just a bit of silly inside humor.
Getting to a place where I could check out guitars in a high-end guitar shop took a while. After a while, you have to just get comfortable with it, kind of like public speaking. There is nothing more intimidating that finally getting the gumption to try, say, a ridiculously expense prewar Martin flattop - I am having a great time! I kind of understand what all the fuss is about!! - and have the shop expert say “hey, did you hear we have one of these?” And then hand me some VERY cool, rare, pricey guitar curiosity that I have NO idea how to play. A great old National in a tuning I don’t know. A D’Angelico archtop looking for some sophisticated jazz chording.
So, the feeling of Guitar Center Performance Anxiety is always there. One of those universal things 
Last story (it’s early; I am in the mood): Was at Lark St. Music in NJ. Buzzy Levine always has a nice selection of wonderful old guitars. This time, he had a Selmer Maccaferri from the 1930’s. Now, if you draw a line through the Best Guitarist Ever over the years, it will go right through Django Reinhardt, the two-fingered Gypsy caravan master, who innovated with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. He famously played Selmer Maccaferris, a curious sidebar of a guitar that really are their own category. Different build, design approach, overall sound.
So, he has one - apparently with a serial number a few away from Django’s main one. I think he wanted $30,000 for it. Excited and curious, I pulled it down.
There was no way I could make noises on it that did NOT make me sound like an idiot ;). The neck was ultra square - almost like a Hawaiian lap steep with slightly rounded corners. It sounded like a piccolo guitar - it had NO lows in its tone. Not in a bad way - it sounded really cool! - just felt totally unfamiliar. It was a different, curious beast of a guitar that played smoothly but in a completely foreign way.
I sat there attempting to noodle on it, played the jazz equivalent of Smoke on the Water or Stairway, laughed a bit, and chalked it up to a cool experience. So it goes.
But then they’re playing it wrong. Is it still verboten when played correctly?
(ducks)
Cat Scratch Fever
Okay, here’s the Poll thread for your votes.
Yeah. When I was stationed in NYC, I spent some time and a lot of money on “Music Row” on 48th St. And I’d also be the consultant when friends wanted to spend some money on an instrument or amplifier, so I was somewhat known at one of the stores. Not Manny’s or Sam Ash (which were down the block and/or across the street), but they sold pretty much what I wanted at competitive prices. Since they were all pro shops, you never knew who’d be there, so you were always looking around to see if you could spot someone famous.
So, my roommate had been impressed enough by my musicianship that he wanted to take the leap and buy an acoustic guitar and learn to play it. At that time, Martin had a sub-brand named “Sigma”. These weren’t the original Martin Sigmas, which were made in Nazareth and for some reason or another didn’t pass one stage of Quality Assurance and couldn’t be rebuilt to earn a Martin foil/label but too far along to toss on the scrap heap. So they’d finish building it with lesser quality components and call it a “Sigma” and sell them fairly inexpensively. But later Martin authorized a nice line of inexpensive guitars under the Sigma name built in Japan. They were very good starter guitars and priced right. So Roomie looked at a couple, liked the one that made me think of a D-18, and asked me to check it out. I tried it, the action was good, it had a good feel to it, the strings were a bit old, and the tuners were okay. So I retuned it and tried a couple of bars of the intro to Suite Judy Blue Eyes. I looked up and EVERYONE in the store was looking at me. Maybe they were disappointed I wasn’t Stills?
Anyway, Roomie bought that guitar. I told him to buy a strap, capo, and tuner with it (it came with a case) and that he should gripe about the strings and talk them into throwing in 2 sets of D’Addario phosphor bronze lights and a dozen fender light picks.