Posted on 02/13/2021 2:11:07 PM PST by Borges
It’s time to say goodbye to a beloved institution. By the end of February, all Family Video stores will be closed. The announcement came early last month that they would remain open until February 28th, or when all the stock has been sold off, whichever comes first. Upon hearing this news, for three weekends in January, I trekked out from Chicago to many remote locations to try and score some good deals, but also to savor the video store experience one last time. The final days of Family Video represent not just the closing of a beloved chain, but the very end of a piece of film history.
With the exception of Facets Videotheque in Chicago and the now-famous “Last Blockbuster” in Bend, Oregon, the video store as I know it is gone. I’m sure others are out there just barely hanging on, but I only know about these two. The rare video store has become a kind of specialty boutique. Predictably, COVID all but killed Family Video’s chances of survival. With most movies going to streaming and many not even getting a proper physical release, there’s no way a video business can survive. It’s rather remarkable they lasted as long as they did, with hundreds of stores located across 17 states.
(Excerpt) Read more at rogerebert.com ...
You can own a video on the cloud, if you trust that.
But fond memories of the 1980s and 1990s when I used to stop at one after work, usually on a Friday night, to load up on films for $2 a pop. The new releases were usually hard to get but discovered a lot of great older movies this way.
Mostly on VCR tape - remember how we had to rewind them before returning to the store? Or we would get charged a $1 "rewinding' fee? I ended up buying a stand-alone VCR rewinder for just that purpose, because it took forever to rewind in the VCR machine.
Now everything is stream, stream, stream.
I need to get a copy of Blazing Saddles.
Redbox does that job already. I still remember going to Blockbuster, and as I got older, the “smaller” video stores with a “magical” back room with curtains lol
I think there is a store in Bucksport, Maine that specializes in renting videos. Free popcorn some nights.
They do a good business.
Saw a story on TV about a guy in California....in San Leandro ?, who sold videos in his shop for one dollar and makes about $100,000 per year.
So they still exist here and there.
Back when I had HBO and blank video tapes were a thing, I would tape movies for posterity, carefully labelling each one in neat script with a Sharpie, sliding the title card into the plastic sleeve on the side. I filled an entire bookshelf of these videos and don’t think I ever watched a single one. They unceremoniously got thrown into a dumpster in the early 2000s when I moved from one house to another.
In my area we had two or three independent video stores and two Blockbusters. I think they’ve all been gone at least eight or nine years.
If you stream, you don’t own it.
So at anytime it can be deleted.
Which is why there are certain things I will always buy in real space.
20 years ago Netflix offered to sell to Blockbuster for a throwaway price. Blockbuster execs laughed.
I still have a lot of those huge laser discs. Good pictures. I think I still have that player also-— somewhere.
“By the end of February, all Family Video stores will be closed...”
Didn’t netflix get started because the eventual founder got charged for a rewinding fee which he thought was ludicrous?
“a beloved institution”
Yeah, right. If you liked trudging out in the lousy weather, finding all the titles you wanted not in stock, inventory mixed up, tapes not rewound (going way back), scratched DVDs, surly teenage clerks who think “Beevis & Butthead” was fine cinema, long lines at the checkout because the family of eight kids can’t decide between Raisinettes and Goobers.
“Beloved” — SNORT!
Movie theaters soon to follow.
Amazon.
I haven’t seen a video store for many, many years. I thought Redbox was the last vestige of physical video rental.
There’s a DVD/CD garage type office selling used ones near us; great to wander the aisles finding some classics.
Yup. I’m going to get a copy one day before it’s banned by the woke crowd.
History Of The World: Pt.1 also.
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