With my daughter turning the big 3 this year I started thinking about the stuff I grew up with that she will have no idea what I am talking about. Like TVs with a back, beepers, no internet and my all time favorite thing to do in my early years was to go to the local mom and pop video rental store.
I love movies... no really I love movies I think I would kill someone to watch one. When I was a kid every Friday night was video rental night. Our local store was called Video City. I miss this place, it was so low key that you didn't even have a rental card, everyone was given a three digit ID number.
That isn't a picture of the great Video City, couldn't find one, this is a picture from Movies 4 Sale that has long since closed. The cool thing about Video City was the fact that you could have the posters off the wall. My room was draped in posters from top to bottom. From Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure to The Last Boy Scout(personal favorite), I had them all.
One of my favorite things from Video City was the staff. They were late teens to early twenty somethings that loved movies more than me. It was dream of mine to get a job there once I was sixteen. But the store closed before that could ever happen. I miss the clerk picks and the late fees and of course the lone arcade game in the corner. It was always Q-Bert or Pac-Man and you knew who had the high score. On a given Friday night there would be skateboarders and kids smoking outside the store, it was the place to be.
I know that I'm old and I should just embrace the downloading trend, but I really can't get on board. This is all coming from a guy that would not get a DVD player for years because VHS kicks ass. So what the hell do I know?!!
I was never that big of a Blockbuster fan just because of what they represented, which was the death of the mom and pop store. Now thanks to Blockbuster we see the death of the video rental store.
The stores that were around the mom and pop rental stores were always nothing that would ever go with it. Like a tanning salon or a hallmark or dollar store. Mine was next too a buffet and a drug store, oh and a carpet store. Everything you want in one plaza, welcome to Florida home of the plaza.
Mom and pop stores always had the most out there videos that Blockbuster would never even think about carrying. Without Video City I would have never seen such classics like Evil Dead 2, Faces of Death, I Spit On Your Grave, Meatballs, Three O'Clock High, DC Cab, Red Dawn, the list can go on and on. I found a store once in Orlando where I bought a used copy of Evil Dead 2 for $9. This was back when the movie was very much out of print.
That was then and this is now. Those stores are long gone, I have found some online that still rent videos, they are still out there. I wish they were able to work with online and keep this great places alive. What can you do? Times change and we get older and older. One day my daughter will down load Evil Dead 2 and watch it and wonder what is wrong with my taste of movies. I bet she would like it after renting it from a store after playing some Q-Bert and drinking some Mountain Dew.
God bless America where the mom pop store closes and dies.
No comments:
Post a Comment