The Lost Art of Video Stores

The Lost Art of Video Stores

So, I wanted to do a post that was going to be, sorta kinda, about one of my favorite fairy tales.  But then I realized there were a lot of different layers to that, not even necessarily relating to said fairy tale at all, and that what I really need to post about was Video Stores!

I spent a non-insubstantial fraction of my formative years in video stores. From the time when I was little and slammed my sister’s hand in the car door right outside the video store and thank-goodness they had a customer-accessible restroom for cleanup, to the time my college roommate and I had to argue with the clerk at Crazy Mike’s to let us rent one of the multiple Kama Sutra titles – which movie he claimed was so bad he didn’t want us paying money for it – and beyond.

Video stores now seem like an artifact of the before-times.  A previous inefficiency done away with by streaming services, that took up lots of time and retail space.  And I sorely miss them.

Like book stores and libraries, each video store that was was a place that had some degree of character that was all its own.  Even your generic, way-too-brightly-lit (or was that just me) Blockbuster held the promise of cool, new visuals and stories just waiting to be discovered.  And most had some funky nook somewhere, either deliberately curated by the employees, or else just serendipitously assembled by the happenstance of alphabetized-by-genre + real physical shelving that would let you stumble onto something new, maybe something interesting and great, maybe awful, maybe just really different than what you ever would have found for yourself.

And that’s the first, really obvious thing I miss about video stores.  I miss physically browsing for things in a way that forces you to stumble over a bunch of stuff that maybe wasn’t what you were looking for, but actually looks pretty interesting!  In fact, in a physical store, you could go in with zero idea of what you wanted to watch, and in ten minutes find something that probably sounded pretty good.

Interestingly, I don’t miss this about bookstores as much.  Aside from the fact that bookstores still exist and so I can still go browse them sometimes, it’s almost like bookstores (and books in general) have too much inventory to make this same sort of magic.  In the bookstore, too often all you’ve got is the new stuff that recently came out (in part because the old stuff has been bought).  Whereas the video store always had its THIS IS BRAND NEW section, but then otherwise everything was shelved by genre with pretty-darned-new stuff shelved next to much older stuff.  (Yes, there were often separate sections for classics – don’t miss the point.). But also, the inventory was small enough (and the investment time of watching a movie short enough) that not only would you visually see this other stuff you might not have been looking for, but often you’d be compelled to try at least some of it.  Especially if you loved watching movies and found yourself at the video store often.

Compared to that, online browsing of streaming catalogs pretty much sucks.  It’s too curated.  And there’s either not enough in a given box, or WAY too much.  And most frustratingly (though perhaps I am just not good with modern technology?) if you want to find new shows in a specific sub-genre and, say, type in a classic as a reference point, the darned things feed you up other shows MADE IN THE SAME TIME PERIOD.  No.  Dude.  I want that sub-genre, but something I haven’t seen before.  Ideally something new, even though I fed you something like Lady Hawk, or Back To The Future, or Assassins.  I am a parent!  I have a big time gap that was smothered in Animated Features.  Please help me fill it with something not Animated Features.  I know there were other, cool things being made when the Animated Features gap took over.

Okay, that’s one thing.  And it’s an important thing!  But next, let me go back to that part where I said video stores were a foundational part of my formative years.  Some of my earliest memories are of running around in video stores, when the aisles seemed so much bigger it was like a labyrinth (a labyrinth with different places in it).  (Also, note, similar nostalgia feeling to being kid-sized and hiding inside the clothes racks at the store.  How great was that?)  At that time, the most important sections were Faerie Tale Theatre, and National Geographics.  Both of those were so great.  We would go to the video store every week, and my mother would rent a TV and VCR (yes, talk about not having everything packaged up in one self-contained device), get something for herself, and let me and my sister pick something.  Those National Geographics felt like being able to go out and explore the whole world.  To this day, I remain obsessed with Africa: Wilds of Madagascar.  There is a very specific, and enduring magic in those memories.

When we got older, it was walking down the train tracks to the local video store to rent Nintendo games (Rainbow Island!), or the time my mom, sister, and I rented the first video of Colin Firth’s Pride & Prejudice, not realizing it was a miniseries, and felt completely left hanging when the tape ended only just after Jane and Elizabeth finally went home after Jane’s terrible cold.  Nothing had really happened yet, BUT WE NEEDED TO KNOW MORE!  And then, of course, college, and a roommate who adored foreign films, so that I got to explore yet newer things!  (Was it The Wedding Banquet we watched twice back-to-back because we hadn’t been patient enough to wait for our other friends for the first round, but then the friends turned out to actually be eager, too?)  The internet was starting to be a thing (‘starting’) (note, I’m a slow adopter with absolutely everything), but the video store remained an important escape hatch into the rest of the world.

So, in some ways, maybe I miss video stores the way I miss the stretching and growing time of youth, something I can’t actually directly get back again.  Or I’m an old dog yelling about how the old tricks (browsing that was actual BROWSING!) were better.  But I think at this stage in my life, what I really, actually miss most about video is the experience of exploring them with someone else, the way that they helped tie friendships together.

Want to hang out but don’t know what to do on a Saturday night?  Go to the video store, whether that’s with a rambling gaggle of college friends, or just you and your bestie, or maybe you and this cute guy you’ve just started dating.  The video store held a wealth of stories and possible experience, both new things you guys could bond over together, and old things you could share with each other.  A natural, and fun way to learn more about the other person, to let them introduce you to new things and grow, to have heated arguments about stuff that didn’t actually matter, but you could pretend that it did, and find out whether arguing with this person was awful or fun!

I want to be able to go browse the video store with my husband again.  To make lots of commentary on what we find, and pick something that might be awful or might be great.  To make a date of it.  Walk back in the rain, pop it in the player, and snuggle on the couch.

I want to be able to go negotiate my way through the video store with my daughters.  Not the bookstore, where everybody’s choosing for themselves and only half the people want to be there anyway.  And not scrolling the awful streamers’ browse setup, where one person has taken control of looking while the rest of us wait, restless because we’re not actually moving around like we would be at a video store.  I want to wander the aisles as a family, pick things up to suggest or maybe horrify each other with, and then see the things they pick up in response.  To get a little taste of watching their preferences in action.  To haggle with them about it.

I miss being in video stores.  Yes, you had to drive or walk there, and then spend time wandering around, and then drive or walk home.  And if what you got turned out to be awful, well, too bad.  In theory the streamers’ selection is much larger, the selection process more efficient.  But is it really?  It makes for a pretty one-dimensional experience when what I really want is to just kill some time hanging out with my friends.

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