Reminder: Video Store Day is Saturday the 17th! (1 Viewer)

[Tony J Case]

Remember kids, Independent Video Store Day is this Saturday the 17th. Go support your (almost certainly struggling) mom n' pop stores! If they're anything like my local store, they'll have deals and giveaways and popcorn.

 

[TravisR]

As a lover of the independent video store and a former employee of one, I'd love to support this but there are literally no indie stores anywhere near me. I'm not even aware of a corporate video store near me anymore.

 

[Charles Smith]

Seems like I should know of one somewhere in my area .....


But I don't.

 

[Tony J Case]

Yeah, that's the trouble - video stores are increasingly rare (hence the need to show them some love where you can). Even a big city like Seattle only has 3 or 4 that I can think of.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Independent Video Store Day? What's next -- Pay Telephone Day?

 

[Brian Kidd]

There was a video store I frequented in college that turned me on to so many great films I wouldn't have seen otherwise. It is sadly long-gone. No stores left in my area. I miss browsing the shelves.

 

[Malcolm R]

There was a video store I frequented in college that turned me on to so many great films I wouldn't have seen otherwise. It is sadly long-gone. No stores left in my area. I miss browsing the shelves.

Same here. I used to love browsing the shelves. It just doesn't seem the same paging through a streaming service or the Redbox screens.

 

[Tony J Case]

And the VHS box art was SO awesome - sometimes far more awesome than the movie it was depicting!

 

[TravisR]

There was a video store I frequented in college that turned me on to so many great films I wouldn't have seen otherwise. It is sadly long-gone. No stores left in my area. I miss browsing the shelves.

It was high school and college for me but same here. I've pretty much always been a big horror movie fan and thanks to my local store, I saw so many movies that I would have otherwise never seen until the dawn of DVD. Blockbuster didn't carry Dawn Of The Dead or The Evil Dead or The Last House On The Left or I Spit On Your Grave or even something like Eraserhead. If not for my store, I would have been stuck looking at pictures of those movies in Fangoria or Video Watchdog. Time & technology march on blah blah blah but there really was something great about being able to walk the aisles of a real store or talk face to face with people who have similar interests and find out about other cool movies that I would have missed if not for a recommendation or a cover.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Video stores were great, but once reasonably-priced DVDs came out I stopped renting and bought all my movies instead.

 

[SilverWook]

There are at least two indie video stores left in my area. One being right across the street from several apartment/townhouse complexes certainly helps. When I lived nearby, I could return movies with a 20 minute round trip walk.


The other is the counterpart of the local indie record store across the street, and always carried all the stuff Blockbuster didn't. Being in a two story building, they had double the floor space of the competition. They once had a large Betamax section, and even got the few S-VHS movies that were ever released. The only gripe I ever had was they never really got into Laserdiscs. Even Blockbuster had LD's in the 90's.


Last time I was there, it's 80's ambience was still mostly intact. I think some monitors had finally been replaced with flatscreens. Maybe I'll go check them out this weekend.

 

[Tony J Case]

Time & technology march on blah blah blah but there really was something great about being able to walk the aisles of a real store or talk face to face with people who have similar interests and find out about other cool movies that I would have missed if not for a recommendation or a cover.

There was always something exotic and forbidden about the bead curtain or swinging saloon doors that partitioned off the Porn Section from the rest of the store. Stupid, I know - but to my teenager brain, it seemed so distant and magical.

 

[Charles Smith]

We had an indie one here that hung on for an extraordinary long time, and they told me once that their continued business was due to their maintaining as deep a selection as they could -- they never got rid of anything -- on both VHS and DVD. As recently as two years ago, it was STILL a pleasure to go in and browse and discover things.


(No one has taken over their building yet, and their sign is still up. I like to view it as a tribute or memorial.)


I wish these stores could have found the ongoing viability and success that record stores did.

 

[SilverWook]

There was always something exotic and forbidden about the bead curtain or swinging saloon doors that partitioned off the Porn Section from the rest of the store. Stupid, I know - but to my teenager brain, it seemed so distant and magical.

The two story store I mentioned used to keep the adult stuff in a dimly lit back hallway that lead to the restrooms, (and a fire exit) after using it for a clearance sale on their Beta titles. (There might have been saloon doors too.) I always thought that was funny for some reason.


One video store I used to go to simply kept Adult titles behind the counter where you could still see the boxes. I once mistook Indiana Joan and The Black Hole of Mamoo for a certain Harrison Ford movie not out on video just yet, before I got close enough to see the box more clearly.


This was also the only store I knew of that dared to openly sell those infamous "X rated" Atari 2600 games like Custer's Revenge.

 

[Tony J Case]

We had an indie one here that hung on for an extraordinary long time, and they told me once that their continued business was due to their maintaining as deep a selection as they could -- they never got rid of anything -- on both VHS and DVD. As recently as two years ago, it was STILL a pleasure to go in and browse and discover things.

That's how Scarecrow survived (barely). They have *EVERYTHING* - VHS, Beta, Laser, DVD, Blu. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked it they have a 16mm print or two hanging around in the back. And if it was ever released on home media, they probably have a copy. The most obscure, forgotten, overlooked films ever put down to tape are here, somewhere. They have something like 20 or 25 thousand titles on hand.

 

[SilverWook]

Can't recall if this has been discussed here before, but it's worth posting in this thread anyway.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/nyregion/for-some-new-york-immigrants-vhs-is-king-for-movie-rentals.html?_r=0


There's been a few horror titles in recent years that came with a "bonus" VHS cassette and retro style packaging. I don't anticipate a resurrection on the level of vinyl records, but it's a nice homage to the old days.