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The lost civic life of movie rental stores
- JJTikTok 2mo ago[dead]
- comrade1234 2mo agoJust as long as you pretend to not notice your neighbor come out of the curtained room...
- panzagl 2mo agoArticle should be titled 'The Lost Civic Life of Mom and Pop Stores'- no kid making $4.50 an hour is cultivating a third space atmosphere at Blockbuster, whereas any Mom and Pop place can do that, no matter what they sell.
- steveBK123 2mo agoI was thinking about the loss of local shops a lot recently. There's definitely a confluence of factors at play, and it's not just price economics vs online & big box. One thing I think is that theres just never enough time. Everyone is so over-scheduled. The white collar work day really has expanded vs what I remember my dad doing 30-40 years ago. There's more two income households than in the past. Parenting is far more active for both parents than it's ever been, and kids are being shuttled between events all weekend. Most local shops are not open past 5pm or at best 6pm, and often closed Sunday. Who is off work by then to stop by? Easier to click buy on amazon, and stop by the big box store after dinner Saturday open til 9pm for anything you need sooner.
- bix6 2mo agoWas just talking with an older colleague about this. Work used to end Friday afternoon. The amount of emails I get (and send) over the weekend means there is truly never any off time.
- liveoneggs 2mo agoreading and responding to those on the weekend is your choice
- bix6 2mo agoYeah that’s a privileged point of view. You lose clients if you aren’t responsive enough.
- blitzar 2mo agoYeah that’s a privileged point of view. You lose your job if you aren’t responsive enough.
- afavour 2mo agoIt isn’t, really. If it’s the expected norm in your job then there’s a real chance you’ll lose your job if you don’t do it. And particularly the kind of jobs market we see today that’s a real risk.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoActually not for most people. This is a peculiarity mostly of the tech industry. Most people don't read their work email after 5:00.
- zbikowski 2mo agoI'm not sure what authority you have on this subject, but anecdotally speaking as a non-software engineer who would lump himself with "most people," when it comes to white-collar work, I have noticed that all of my colleagues are, at the very least, expected to read email during time off (weekend or PTO) if not respond. This applies to adjacent industries as well. I semi-regularly get email from firms (in the same time zone as mine) in the 11PM–2AM range. Again, I'm not purporting to have any more experience than you do, but you can't assert that this is a tech-industry-only phenomenon when I am sure applicable examples other than my own could be found. I wish I could go without, but spending the first billable hour catching up on email is not really acceptable.
- toofy 2mo agothe time thing rings very true to me as blocker. when i get off work i would absolutely (and do) shop at stores that are open. i stopped 90% of online shopping a couple years ago so once i regained the lay of the land of where to get what, shopping at mom and pop stores is tough since they seem to close right when everyone gets off work. larger chain stores seem to keep longer hours so they get more of my business than i’d like. even then i’m still happier than when i bought everything online, no question about it.
- inigyou 2mo agoIt's rent. We are all working so hard to pay the rent. Which always expands to take any money available and then some. It's stack-ranking us on working hours.
- msisk6 2mo agoWhenever I see these sorts of stories I think about the civic life we're missing out on by not socially gathering with our neighbors to hunt down woolly mammoths with sharp sticks so we don't all collectively starve to death. The way things are going maybe we'll get back to those wonderful days. ;)
- bix6 2mo agoSounds a lot more fun to me than sitting in front of a computer all day.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoAvailability and legality of wooly mammoths aside, what's stopping you? Pointy stick hunting sounds like a great weekend activity.
- criddell 2mo agoA bunch of families in the town I grew up in bought a fairly large cabin together in northern Ontario they just called "the hunting camp". My family wasn't involved but I got to go up there quite a few times as a guest of my friends. In theory, the adults were hunting or fishing (although not with pointy sticks). In reality they were smoking, drinking, playing cards, screwing around on the little boat and atvs that were there (three wheelers!), and telling lies around a campfire. Us kids were pretty much on our own the entire time. We too were smoking, drinking, and screwing around on the boat and atvs. So I agree with you- pointy stick hunting is a great weekend activity.
- liveoneggs 2mo agohalf the article is nostalgia for the blockbuster job
- threetonesun 2mo agoI don't think that's really what we've lost. Blockbuster was a third space not because of its staff, but because it was a place you could say "meet me here" and hang out looking at movies with no (or very little) expected monetary output. Same as arcades in the mall, or cheap matinee movies. A better framing might be where would a teenager, today, say "meet me here" to their friends. I think you'll find there's many fewer around you today than there was 20 years ago.
- triceratops 2mo agoMalls still exist. As do public libraries, community rec centers, gyms, and pools.
- threetonesun 2mo agoMalls barely exist, at least compared to the way they did 20 years ago. I wasn't arguing all third spaces are gone, but even of the ones you did note I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period.
- triceratops 2mo ago> Malls barely exist, at least compared to the way they did 20 years ago Presumably because people spend less money there than they used to. > I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period. It's one of the tragedies of our age. The inability to fund anything for the common good.
- autoexec 2mo agoMalls have been in decline for decades. Public pools barely exist anymore either. (https://www.poolmagazine.com/pool-news/america-is-losing-public-pools-at-an-alarming-rate/ https://www.poolmagazine.com/pool-news/america-is-losing-pub...). If you're in a wealthy city you probably still have a decent community center. Libraries are probably the most common space avilable, but they are also under constant attack by republicans. In wealthy cities you can find all kinds of services there. Smaller libraries will have some areas for reading and meeting.
- pimlottc 2mo agoPlaces don't need to be curated to have value as civic spaces, although it certainly helps. Seniors hang out at the local McDonalds, car modding enthusiasts gather in strip mall parking lots, singles meet at the dog park... Any place you have to physically go to provides a chance for social interaction. To debate your friends over what movie to pick, to comment on your neighbor's selections, to ask a clerk for a recommendation. Are these pretty slight? Sure, but life is made fuller by these minor brushes, and you never know which ones will unexpectedly bloom into something more.
- AngryData 2mo agoThe only non-bar place with an social atmosphere that I even know of anymore is one town nearby has a hardware store that has the old family line running it that the father and grandfather can sit around shooting the shit in it as a semi-job as they let their kids manage and operate it. And so a lot of other grey beards like to hang around for awhile when they go to pick up a can of 3-in-1 oil or a can of paint because they have known these people for 60+ years. They did have to move to a more prime location in town as the town shrank over the decades, and they also added a gun/sportings good section, and then one son learned gunsmithing to make its otherwise limited size and selection more useful. But that is certainly not the norm, im not sure if I could find another hardware store like it within 100 miles. The social atmosphere probably barely manages to bring in the extra business needed to maintain it and it took 3 consecutive generations working well enough together and towards their customers to never break the strong community bond.
- chrisco255 2mo agoI made $6 an hour working at a video game store in the early 00s and most of our employees would chat it up with other gamers all the time. We had lots of regulars.
- balderdash 2mo ago100% I miss my local pharmacy. Knew the family that owned it and worked there (not well but enough to say hello), really enjoyed occasionally having breakfast as the lunch counter on a Saturday morning. So much better than going to cvs or Walgreens etc.
- steveBK123 2mo agoThe end of interest-based 3rd places is one of the many things contributing to the compartmentalization / socioeconomic bubble of modern society. People used to frequent in person things like specialty retailers, arcades, hobby clubs, religious groups, etc. When you meet real life people in person based on shared interests, you make connections across socioeconomic groups. I just don't see nearly as much of this in todays society as 20+ years ago. People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to, but even there a lot of kids activities have become economically stratified. Instead of playing in the local $50/year rec baseball league, there's tiers of travel teams to meet any budget.
- afavour 2mo ago> People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to This is something welcome I didn’t expect to come from parenthood. Like many others I had thought to myself “how do you even make new friends in your thirties?!” and then once I had kids… bam. New friendship groups. For us the local park and playground are a great equalizer in terms of economic stratification. But when the weather turns bad it rears its head again as people head to $50 a go trampoline parks and the like. Public school is another unifier, of course. I’m in NYC and our preschool was very obviously not a reflection of the neighborhood or city around us. But once my kids entered the city-funded Pre-K they started to meet a ton of kids from different backgrounds. It’s very different from the childhood I had but I’m very glad my kids have it.
- pstuart 2mo agoI kind of experienced that but the relationships were more superficial than I'd have liked. If the "shared interest" is happy kids together it doesn't directly translate to the adults shared interests. But then again, maybe it was just me being me.
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- mirmor23 2mo agomore romanticizing of the bygone era. late fees (due at midnight!), restocking fees, etc; some of these fees to the tune of a new dvd/vhs; good riddance.
- ghaff 2mo agoA bit cruel and there were probably some indie stores that were different but I remember video rentals as a place where you went in, grabbed a movie, and left.
- mirmor23 2mo agothe big city that i lived in back then only had blockbuster or hollywood so my comment was about them; besides indie video rentals didn't have those kind of fees so, i was not talking about them. besides why cruel? market dynamics change and many businesses just don't make it..
- jjulius 2mo agoIndie rental shops in many areas did, in fact, have those kinds of fees.
- julienchastang 2mo agoThat's true and when the Netflix DVD service arrived, I thought it was really a situation where the consumer had finally won. (No late fees! Yay!). That said here in Boulder we had the Video Station which was a phenomenal place for browsing and discovery with a super knowledgeable staff especially for foreign and art house cinema. They survived for a surprisingly long time, but finally closed about ten years ago [0]. Not long ago, while cleaning out an old (manual transmission -- another artifact of a bygone era) car I found a Video Station receipt which I still have. Good times! [0] https://www.dailycamera.com/2017/02/27/the-video-station-boulders-last-rental-outlet-closing-next-week-after-35-years/ https://www.dailycamera.com/2017/02/27/the-video-station-bou...
- calvinmorrison 2mo ago
- golemotron 2mo agoI wonder when we'll see articles on the lost civic life of social media? With increasing AI use, it is happening.
- tripleee 2mo agothat already happened. The early days of Facebook as a user were much different than what they became later on.
- blitzar 2mo agoearly instagram vs influencer instagram ... early twitter vs whatever that shit is now ... the list is long ... you either disappear like tumblr or you stay up long enough to turn into a dumpster fire.
- reaperducer 2mo agoThe early days of Facebook as a user were much different than what they became later on. Facebook jumped the shark when it eliminated customization and forced everyone to have the same personal page. "Pieces of Flair" and a thousand other ways to express yourself were extinguished, along with any actual "social" aspects of Facebook.
- buildsjets 2mo agoFacebook jumped the shark the instant they allowed non-.edu email domains to sign up.
- Izkata 2mo agoAnd Network pages which you were automatically included in based on your .edu domain, designed to facilitate real-world activities at that location.
- ghaff 2mo agoI used to do a lot of chit-chat with folks I knew on Twitter during the work day. After Musk largely torched it and a lot of people just decided they didn't need that kind of social media any longer, that channel largely went away. I use Facebook some but not the same and LinkedIn even less so.
- kkylin 2mo agoWhere I live we still have a locally owned video rental store, though several years ago they put in a bar and now it's more a bar with a video section than a video store where you can get beer and watch movies. We do still rent when there's something we can't stream on one of the services we pay for; I much rather do that than give more $ to Amazon and the like.
- pseingatl 2mo agoIt's weird when shops pivot. There was a record store in a neighboring village that went from vinyl to video game kiosks. Then the record store that became a candy store. Put couches in bookstores and people stop buying books. I guess they figure the rent is paid by benefactors. Then again, Barnes & Noble seems to have a partnership with Starbucks...
- bix6 2mo agoMore housing and fewer spaces for gathering seems to be the trend. Any open space near me became condos or protected habitat space (can’t even walk in because people trash it). There are practically no town squares. Parks are all gated by HOAs. Even the beach is encroached on by housing which means there isn’t enough parking. Where are people supposed to gather now and just enjoy the day? I see libraries, coffee shops, bars, parks, and beaches as the main zones. Not bad but there aren’t enough (or enough time to enjoy them).
- pseingatl 2mo agoLibraries are daycare for the homeless. At one city's public library, one of the librarians was mopping up vomit and was heard to comment, "I didn't go to library school for this." Washrooms double as a place to shower, reading rooms a place to sleep.
- calvinmorrison 2mo agolibraries are also just daycares for... kids. My library (which is on my block) is only open a few hours week in which gainfully employed adults would be able to go. The rest is geared to grannies and kids
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jimbokun 2mo agoThat is a very good thing. Kids desperately need third spaces too.
- tartoran 2mo agoI think it's great for kids to grow up amongst books. As for the homeless, it's fine if they don't stink and use the library for what it is, a place to read books or possibly go online. Any other behavior should not be tolerated.
- tomjakubowski 2mo ago
- awfawf 2mo agothis article is trash. the "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" of someone who had a TV for parents.
- cube00 2mo agoThis must be from a different era. In the 90s, people at our store used to stare at the shelves in silence. You certainly weren't striking up conversation with strangers there. The screaming and explosions from the movie trailers playing full blast on a non-stop loop throughout the store over the PA didn't help.
- singingtoday 2mo agoThat was my experience, and in the 90s as well.
- Tagbert 2mo agowe would ask recommendations and discuss experiences of watching various movies with strangers or with people we regularly saw at the video store
- chrisco255 2mo agoOccasionally it would happen. It definitely wouldn't happen every time you went in. But I do remember going in with my brother and sister and parents and haggling over what 2 movies we were going to rent for that weekend. That in and of itself was a lesson in negotiation and was part of the fun of the whole thing.
- redwood 2mo agoForever memorialized in Kevin Smith's Clerks
- brightball 2mo agoI talk about this all the time. The experience of going with your friends to Blockbuster or similar, walking around, browsing everything, deciding what you were renting then grabbing pizza made for some pretty memorable weekends. Just having everything listed on 50 different streaming platforms isn't the same experience. There are things we really lose with efficiency gains.
- thebigspacefuck 2mo agoIt seems like the library has more movies than my local video store ever did at this point. But you can’t really talk there, and they don’t show movies on the screen. Maybe they should set up a separate section to give more of a 90s Blockbuster vibe with a dedicated movie librarian, that would be fun.
- rdiddly 2mo agoI feel like this overstates the point a bit. The video store was always just a means to an end for me, the clerks always sullen, the process of agreeing on a movie always long & difficult. Maybe I missed out on the phenomenon he's talking about.
- reaperducer 2mo agoMaybe I missed out on the phenomenon he's talking about. You did. It was a fairly widespread thing. Although "The video store was always just a means to an end for me" indicates that you excluded yourself from this, rather than missing out on it.
- xp84 2mo agoI agree. Independent movie rental shops had a very long window of viability before Blockbuster expanded enough to threaten them, so there were a ton of places that had a better chance of having people who deliberately like working there, than your average corporate-owned retail store today. Plus, pre-smartphone, most people (note: not saying all people) loved talking to other people, so even a movie store employee who wasn't a major film buff would be someone you could build up a rapport with just based on the fact that you're a regular who talks with them. My dad was that way with most of the staff at dozens of the small businesses in town, and even the 'corporate' places like McDonald's, etc.
- singingtoday 2mo agoHow did we exclude ourselves? I went to the store, I got cassettes, discussed it with the people I came with. We do the exact same thing now except use a phone or tablet.
- buildsjets 2mo agoPerhaps the clerk was not sullen, and just preferred to stay out of other people's affairs. You're not allowed to rent here anymore! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEj6d3GTOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEj6d3GTOU I don't think any movie could better capture the atmosphere and culture of a 1980s video store better than "Clerks." For example, the various types of annoying video store customers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9khHJTztKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9khHJTztKk Ordering obscene videos from the warehouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwFjw798mPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwFjw798mPI And some period-era fanfic filmed in an IRL video rental store. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiPC2pIJNzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiPC2pIJNzc
- kstenerud 2mo ago> That same time-traveling video renter might find herself startled by the employee offering to recommend a movie, or by the knot of customers hanging out by the counter, shooting the breeze and discussing film. What universe is this person from? I must have missed it...
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- chrisco255 2mo agoIt wasn't a universal truth some employees in stores didn't really care and were just there for a paycheck but sometimes you found good ones that were passionate and friendly.
- gib444 2mo agoYeah I feel like that's just a scenario that was depicted in movies/tv shows
- pixel_popping 2mo agoI admit it, I've never returned that DVD, found it behind a couch years later, only told my mom a decade later.
- chrisco255 2mo agoProbably set her back $75 for not returning it.
- deadbabe 2mo agoSomeone should make a coffee shop that is also like an old school rental place that has a few CRT TVs with VCRs around and people can take movies down from some shelf and pop them in and watch them on a communal couch. Very third place.
- mcphage 2mo agoFor the Modern American version of that—last time I was in an Urgent Care, they had a tv playing one of the Sharknado movies. The security guard there was excited to show everyone the bit where he was an extra in the film.
- dexterdog 2mo agoI hope he had a license to be broadcasting that publicly. I wish I were being sarcastic about this.
- abhayb 2mo agoI used to live under the guy that ran Lost Weekend on Valencia street. Held out till like 2014/2015. At the time I wasn't really sad about it but now I wish it was still around
- xp84 2mo agoI remember when they opened the Alamo Drafthouse they had a semi-permanent outpost of Lost Weekend included in the lobby area. I wonder if it's on the Killed By Covid And Never Came Back list.
- Taikonerd 2mo agoSo many people are nostalgic for these kind of interest-based stores that there's a whole subgenre of simulation games. For video stores, there's Retro Rewind: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3552140/Retro_Rewind__Video_Store_Simulator/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/3552140/Retro_Rewind__Vid... There are also games like that for trading-card stores, video arcades, and record stores. (I'm probably going to buy the record store one, "Wax Heads." Being a music-genre nerd and recommending bands to people is a fantasy that I was born 10 years too late to do in real life.)
- xp84 2mo ago> the drive-in theater took on much of the role that the earlier movie theater had played, serving as a third place for local youth and families where the space and interactions with other audience members were as important as the movie (if not more so). But even this drive-in culture began to disappear I've been kind of puzzled, since the first time I gave it any thought, why "going to a movie" is culturally thought of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date. Much like dining out in a sit-down restaurant. Yet the expectation is that you sit in silence for 2 hours and spend maybe 5-10 minutes critiquing or raving as you walk out. But now I'm wondering if the custom of doing this together is a vestigial one, formed in a time when the 'going to the cinema' was a more social event even as late as the drive-in era (I have never experienced a drive-in).
- ghaff 2mo ago>why "going to a movie" is culturally thought of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date. Much like dining out in a sit-down restaurant. Let me unpack a little bit. I very rarely go to movies and really haven't for years. So it isn't a social activity so mostly won't except for the odd shoe in IMAX. I will go see live theatre with someone or maybe a group. But am also perfectly happy to do so on my own. As to meals? I'm so inured to solo meals with business travel I don't think twice. Enjoy eating with friend(s) whether in a business or purely social context. But it's not like I'm going to order room service or go to McDonalds if I don't have anyone to sit with.
- xp84 2mo agoYeah, I've reversed course on both those things now. I literally just tell my spouse, "I think tonight at 8 I'm going to go see Project Hail Mary" since I'm the only one interested in that kind of movie. And dine wherever I want when I'm alone. I think it was a lot harder when I was 18 because I saw being alone as a reflection on my worth as a person.
- ghaff 2mo agoI was on the college's film committee and I often enjoyed hanging out with some of the other members on a weekend night especially if I didn't have anything else going on or it was later. (We also pre-screened all of our films in case there a problem with the print. So I did that too sometimes.) I was also fine, if I had a free afternoon with going to one of the discount theaters in town if there was something I wanted to see. But, yeah, looking back I think I was a lot less inclined to just eat by myself in a restaurant--partially because I could often rope someone else in or would know people if I went into a dining hall and partly because I wasn't accustomed to just having a meal without anyone else around.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoThis seems counter to my experience and memories. I'm old enough to remember the pre-VCR days so lived through the entire rise and fall of video rental. These stores were never a community gathering place or anywhere that you really met people. You'd go in, browse for a bit, pick a movie, pay and leave. This was the same at the locally owned shops and later when Blockbuster arrived and put all the local shops out of business. I do think we've lost a lot of "civic life" in the past few decades but video rental stores aren't anything I remember fondly.
- BeetleB 2mo agoYeah - the article does over-glorify. I did frequent one rental store where I could chat with the person behind the counter about movies, but none of the others.
- carabiner 2mo agoSeriously. I just remember as a kid seeing my school bus driver browsing the adult video section. I'm sure he did not want to find "community" there.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jasonfarnon 2mo agothere's supposed to be a curtain to keep you nosy freakin kids from seeing us in there!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2mo agoMine had a video game rental store next door (GameCrazy) where I met other gamers.
- nater5000 2mo agoI think people forgot what the experience was actually like and are just recalling commercials where the experience was obviously over romanticized. If Wal-Mart went away today, you'd have people a decade from now reminiscing about how great going to Wal-Mart was and how sad it was we lost a "third place" when they went away.
- petercooper 2mo agoShopping with my kids I noticed we kinda have a replacement here in the UK in the shape of HMV (originally a spin off of His Master's Voice). When I was a kid it was mostly a record store, but now it's focused on what I'd call geek/"fandom" tat: posters, figurines, comics, band merch, etc. Whenever I'm dragged into one, it's always full of geek/fandom types hanging out.
- hallman76 2mo agoObligatory video from theonion: Blockbuster Offers Glimpse Of Movie Renting Past https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrPwOrf4sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrPwOrf4sM "What's so poignant about this time is the uncertainty"
- wduquette 2mo agoThe loss of 3rd places is a big deal; but it seems weird to wax nostalgic over the remarkably brief period that movie rental stores were actually a thing. Blockbuster Video opened in 1985, was overtaken by Netflix starting in 2000, and died in 2010. There were small movie rental shops prior to 1985, but not long prior.
- agumonkey 2mo ago[dead]
- seemaze 2mo agoBe kind, rewind.
- agentultra 2mo agoThis brings me back. I got to work at a movie store for a while. Great times. Almost like Empire Records.
- teunispeters 2mo agoOne of the interesting things of living in Saskatchewan is that due to large portions of the province being offline, video movie rental is still very much alive here, as is videogame rental and other rental formats.
- stuart78 2mo agoI worked in a small, independent video store in my town during college. It was the only place locally where you could get art house, a wide selection of classic movies and other odd-ball tapes. During my time, there was a fair bit of the 'helpful advice' this article focuses on, but I think the bigger loss is due to licensing. At Morris Video, our tapes were available as long as they played (we never switched to DVD). There was no option for the distributor to pull inventory and there were no contracts between Morris and the studios. We bought the tapes for a fixed fee, we rented the tapes as long as we could. The result was a library that included material that was (at the time) impossible to access anywhere else in town, and that could survive the collapse, acquisition or whims of Hollywood distributors. Today, the studios can and do change the content of films you have 'purchased' digitally (The French Connection is the best recent example) and our access to the material is governed by some impenetrable and revokable contract, and the catalogs on offer pale in comparison to Morris if you're looking for older outside of the mainstream. There are benefits to the new mode for sure: Radically lower barrier to entry for independent creators, instant access to quite large libraries, lower priced films than peak physical media. I don't really want to go back to having a huge wall of DVDs or tapes, but I would prefer to live in the world of simpler licensing and ownership.
- jimt1234 2mo agoThe author is really romanticizing here. In 1982, video rental stores were either seedy, dedicated to porn rentals. Or, they were tucked into the back of a record store. Video cassettes were brand new in 1982; no one knew what to make of it. Heck, the industry couldn't even decide on a format (we had Betamax in my house because Mom was convinced it was the future). In fact, in those early days, I recall people were focused more on recording ("I can record my shows and watch them when it's convenient for me!" was a revolutionary concept at the time.) than renting. Once the rental market became a thing, a few local chains popped up. Then the rental market exploded and Blockbuster basically took over the world. They destroyed the local chains. They also sucked the life out of video rental - long lines, poor selection, annoying fees, unknowledgable staff, etc. I really think people are using "rose colored glasses" when they recall the Blockbuster days; it was definitely not all good. The only experience I can recall that matches the article is after Blockbuster took over the video rental world, there were a few local rental places that focused on the love of movies, with a diverse selection and knowledgable staff. These places probably paid the rent with porn rentals, usually in an adjoining room, but the love of movies was always palpable. It was a lot like the article describes. I remember going to one in the early-2000s and renting the original Frankenstein movie (the one with Boris Karloff), something Blockbuster would never stock, much less have staff that even knew there was an original movie. And, yeah, I remember talking to the clerk about it; he ran down the list of all the Frankenstein spin-off movies.
- chrisco255 2mo agoIn my small town Blockbuster was amazing. We had one or two video stores with tiny libraries and were poorly run before that. When Blockbuster opened we were ecstatic and mindblown by the selection. Blockbuster would often carry 30 or 40 copies of new releases and you could actually have a good shot at finding Jurassic Park or Batman or whatever the week it came out on VHS (this was early 90s). The mom and pops near me never did that and they were often disorganized and unclean. Blockbuster may have not been the best for finding old niche classics but if your goal was to find anything mainstream released in the 80s or 90s it was great. Many clerks were passionate about the movies even at Blockbuster, as it was one of the best places to get access to movies at a time when it was a lot of work and effort to even get ahold of a few hundred titles back then.
- benvanderbeek 2mo agoThis week I found a book called “let’s go all around the neighborhood” and read it to my 3 & 4 year old sons. It’s from 1982. A girl and her mother walk around doing errands. Mailing a letter at the post office. Buying shoes at the shoe store. Playing at the park. Eating at a restaurant. Going to the library. Buying an eggbeater at the hardware store. Stopping at the fruit and vegetable stand. They interact with humans at most stops. I thought - in 2026, we can instead text, buy shoes and eggbeaters (?) online, stream / scroll content on devices, order restaurant food on DoorDash and groceries on Instacart. We’re told “you’ll no longer have to” and “now you’ll be able to” with each new technological development. But there’s always a hidden “now you’ll have to” and “you’ll no longer be able to”.
- mc32 2mo agoA bit tangential, but I think something similar to what we see here happen (time saved by modern convenience does not result in pursuit of "personal interests" other than wasting time with technology-enabled entertainment. People think UBI will unleash creativity and people will engage in their true calling in life. I don't see that happening. I see people sinking more of their lives into things that are at war for their eyeballs.
- chrisco255 2mo agoEven in 1982 you could mail a letter from your house, order shoes from a catalog, and order delivery food to your house. Admittedly, your choices were basically pizza, subs or Chinese for that type of delivery, but still, DoorDash mostly competes with cooking at home not with going out to restaurants (in fact, it has become more common to dine out than it was in 1982). I do lament the decline of brick-and-mortar retail somewhat, but I think it is holding on stronger than what I would have assumed in some cases.
- srj 2mo agoAt some point UPS / FedEx became much faster. I recall ordering things in the mid 90s and it taking weeks or months to arrive. That definitely tilted shopping toward retail brick & mortar.
- evereverever 2mo agoMy hometown had an independent video rental store called "Video Rentals". The 1980s were a simpler time.
- ynac 2mo agoI didn't get there on my last visit, but https://www.casafilmbar.com https://www.casafilmbar.com is apparently doubling up on their 3rd place karma by combining a bar with video rental. I've been thinking about offering free videos in town somehow. Taking my collection of various movie media. Anyone have something like this? Like a free library for film, or a corner of someone's storefront? [EDIT] Can't not mention https://scarecrowvideo.org https://scarecrowvideo.org if we're talking video rental survivors.
- KingFelix 2mo agoCasa video is awesome!! Its been around for ages, so rad to go see it today, its full of DVDs, lots of people playing games and watching movies. Def need some more places like this - Would be cool to do the library version for films, also worked at blockbuster, people would ask me what they should watch and i would get them some solid movies
- creamynebula 2mo agoCapitalism replaced businesses that had a social value, in that they helped to form communities, foster dialogue, and promote concrete experiences that you had with your body, mediated by your senses and your will, for usage of tools that only exist to lock you into consumption, withour a community, in experiences that are virtual and meaningless, mediated by the tool itself and for itself.
- deeg 2mo agoThis has been going on for a while, hasn't it? Radio shows, and then the TV. People could begin to entertain themselves without going out. My grandfather talks about how his father and mother went out dancing every week. It's probably an exaggeration brought on by fading memories but we don't to seem to have that as much any more.
- feoren 2mo agoI used to go out dancing 4 nights per week. I had to stop because I had kids, but there are still thriving dance places around. It's still very possible if you live in a big city. I highly recommend trying it.
- paradox460 2mo agoWhat's interesting to me is that most of the big chains have died. Blockbuster, Hollywood, and even Redbox. But small single stores and local chains continue to exist. My hometown of Los Alamos has a video store called Film Festival. It's still in business, still renting tapes, DVDs, etc. When I went back to visit a few years ago I was amazed
- littlexsparkee 2mo agoThere's still one in SF (VideoWave), carries lots of foreign film & Criterion Collection incl. blu-ray/4K.
- gregrata 2mo agoYeah. Did the author actually go to these stores? I grew up in the 80's and 90's, went often, and did not have any of these experiences. Generally didn't have any conversations beyond checking out (and arguing about rewind fees) I understand this is just subjective with a sample size of 1. Anyone else find the same, or was it some kind of great movies social hub?
- trencedamp 2mo ago> Consider the English pub, the French café, the German beer garden, or the American tavern Tavern?
- Upvoter33 2mo agoBlockbusters were like the worst business ever and embodied enshittifying before the term existed. Once in a rare while there was a local video rental though that was cool. And the General point is true.
- donatj 2mo agoThere is a space in my town that has sat empty for many years now. Well over a decade. It used to be a video rental place. I don't know if anything's been in there since. I've kind of half joked with my wife about the idea of opening a modern video rental place there. We both lament the loss of a place or you could go and chit chat about movies. The common refrain is "no one even owns DVD players anymore" to which I say "we'd rent them out too, for a couple dollars a night". I'm sure if I went around garage sales one weekend I could get a stack of them. My wife's idea is to have a number of rooms people could rent for a couple hours for viewing movies in spaces done up in the style of various eras TV rooms. It's kind of depressing just how hard it's become to even try to connect with people through modern media. It's so disposable. I try to talk to my friends about music for instance and the refrain is basically "I don't know, I just put Spotify on". Basically no one's heard of let alone seen most of the shows I watch, nor I theirs. The modern world is a weirdly lonely existence.
- fsuts 2mo ago> I've kind of half joked with my wife about the idea of opening a modern video rental place there. We both lament the loss of a place or you could go and chit chat about movies. South Park did an episode where Randy Marsh does this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_FaceTime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_FaceTime
- Podrod 2mo agoMy city still has a video rental store. They've been going for quite some time https://20thcenturyflicks.co.uk/ https://20thcenturyflicks.co.uk/
- Juicybearded 2mo ago[dead]
- ubermonkey 2mo agoMy own gripe is that, at least in a good-sized city, the late "physical rental" era provided a more complete menu of available films for the consumer. Now things flutter in and out of availability, and are fragmented between countless different services. In 1999, though, a visit to Blockbuster and/or my well-stocked film-geek local store would get me pretty much anything I wanted to watch.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoI don’t agree at all that the video store was a third place unless you lived in the kind of small town where you knew everyone in town (and if you lived in a town like that, you pretty much automatically have more third place opportunities than suburban or urban dwellers). I never had conversations with employees or patrons in the video store. The time spent in that store was enjoyable enough but nothing to write home about. It was mostly a functional experience to get something to watch. You could even argue that it was a waste of your time on a Friday evening when you were ready to start your weekend.
- gwbas1c 2mo agoWhere were these "3rd place" video rental shops? By the mis 1990s Blockbuster pushed everyone out in my town! The selection was limited, the staff rude, ect, ect. I switched to Netflix (DVD by mail) because it had a much better selection.
- firesteelrain 2mo agoI don’t agree with the premise of the article as the video store as a social area. We would go to the movie/video game store nearly every Friday and Saturday in the 80s and early 90s. It was transactional. It wasn’t social - maybe this was regional.
- mvdwoord 2mo agoWe used to have what I think must be one of the last video rental places in The Netherlands around the corner from me. For some reason that always sparked a little nostalgia in me when walking past. The owner owned the building outright and lived above the shop... in one of those Ye Olde Shopping streets in NL. He still had some customers as there were plenty of senior citizens which happily went to him on a Friday to pick out a movie to watch in the weekend. I don't think he made any money in those last 10 years or so, and it was very often closed at random, but as he lived above and owned the building outright I do not think he cared in any way. The owner passed away two years ago or so... and now it is some mortgage shop.
- dncbfwa 2mo agohttps://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/mainstreet/ https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/mainstreet/ -- "An oral-historical exploration of the last video store in Moscow, Idaho, featuring interviews with former staff, customers, board members, and owners of the Main Street Video Co-Op and Howard Hughes Video."
- BrenBarn 2mo agoI could write a really long thing here about my thoughts on video shops. Suffice it to say that there was a video shop in my town that I went to a lot as a kid, and continued to go to occasionally during college and into my late 20s. The shop had opened in 1979 and stayed in business until 2018 --- an astonishing run that spanned essentially the entire era in which renting movies from a brick-and-mortar store was a thing. At the time its impending closure was announced, I hadn't been in for several years, and I still deeply regret not patronizing it more while it still existed.