Video Store Rewind: A Love Story in Two Parts (Part 1)
When it came to technology, we were not early adopters.
I think we got a computer about 15 years after I first played a game on my friend’s Commodore 64. By the time my parents bought me a Nintendo system, most of the other kids had moved on to Gameboys and other, better systems. We held on to our giant console TV with no remote control until it died. My grandmother got a TV with a remote control before we did. The first time I stayed over at her house and got to use the remote control was like being given the opportunity to fly a jet.
I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I had friends who had all of the latest things, so I just went to their houses a lot. And then I went home and threw a football to myself in the street or whizzed a racquetball at the steps and played an entire nine-inning “game” or chucked a Wiffle ball in the air and smacked it into the neighbor’s yard (or, occasionally, the side of her house) before running the bases. I was happy with all that. I didn’t really require much.
But when everybody had VCRs and we didn’t, I got a little jealous.
Cable came to our neighborhood late (we did get that pretty much as soon as we could), so we just had 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 for audiovisual stimulation. The thought that there was another world out there where you could go to a store with hundreds of tapes, rent a tape, bring that tape home, and have Police Academy 2 in your possession for 24 hours was mind-blowing. I would actually go into video stores just to look at the tapes and imagine what it would be like to take one home.
And then the day finally came. We got a VCR. And then a membership to Electronic Junction, the video store down the street.
And nothing was the same after that.
It’s a real tragedy that the New York City tax photos taken in the 1980s don’t have a clear shot of Electronic Junction. There’s a shot of the plaza where Electronic Junction was, but it’s taken from up the street, so you can’t really make out Electronic Junction. Believe me, I tried. Blew it up as much as I could. Squinted real hard. No luck.
I’d genuinely love to see that storefront again. I can see the store in my mind, though. The counter was on the left when you walked in, and the entire left wall of the store was full of the black videotape boxes where the clerk would go after you handed him or her the box you brought from the racks on the right and in the back of the store. Midway through was the New Releases wall, which is where I spent most of my time, scanning for comedies and the newest WWF Coliseum Video tapes (when a new series of wrestling tapes was released, it was a big deal). But I can also remember the video boxes of movies I’ve still never seen that were scattered throughout the store. Das Boot and Eating Raoul and Fatso and The Rabbit Test and Pandemonium. They are all burned into my brain as signposts on a road I had known nothing about but was so excited to know existed.
Eventually, it was not enough to have a membership at one video store. I don’t know why. They pretty much had the same videos. But I guess if having a membership at one video store was cool, having a membership at two would really kick things up a notch. So we went down Victory Boulevard and got a membership to Victory Home Video. I never warmed up to it as much as I did Electronic Junction. It was smaller and it felt too cramped. But it was someplace else to go and stare at video boxes, and that was good enough for me. Also, as I recall, they had better wrestling tapes.
Victory eventually closed, though I think it lasted longer than Electronic Junction. When Victory closed, they offered to transfer our membership to Four Star Video, which was a farther walk but a whole new frontier, so why not? And I don’t remember which was which, but our membership number at one place was S441 and at the other was S144, and this numerical miracle was enough proof that there was a cosmic connection between me and video stores.
Four Star hung on for a while, but eventually it too bit the dust. It was the last of the neighborhood stores, and its demise felt like a door forever closing. If there was a really popular new release, they would put your name on a list and call you when a copy was returned. And if you just showed up looking for a new release, they were very patient while you stood at the counter and quizzed them on every tape that was brought back while you were there. And when I returned my copy of History of the World, Part I and asked if they had Part II, they weren’t mean about saying there was no such movie and the trailer at the end of Part I was just a goof.
And because parking was not great around the store, and Four Star was just far enough out of my neighborhood to feel like a little bit of an adventure, it was really the first place that became a walking destination for me. And from that point to yesterday, when I walked about 25 miles round trip for some doughnuts, there have been a lot of walking destinations. Four Star started the journey.
Four Star was likely done in by the first video superstore that came to Staten Island. You’d think I’d be mad at that store, putting all the little guys out of business. But I didn’t see it that way back then. All I saw was this new giant video store that had lots of copies of new releases and even let you buy previously viewed copies of videos for you to own forever. Life was really coming together. And Palmer Video was the guide.
In retrospect, I probably should have spent more time trying to talk to girls. But we make our choices and live with them.
I remember the grand opening of Palmer Video being a big deal. There were commercials on TV featuring a character called Scoop Palmer, who was a film noir detective that somehow had something to do with a video store. I don’t remember the details. They probably weren’t great details.
The only detail that mattered was a new, huge video store was opening. And, at the beginning at least, they also sold CDs. In fact, I bought my first CDs at Palmer Video: Television’s Greatest Hits (as in theme songs from TV, not the band’s greatest hits), the soundtrack to Pretty Woman, and the Black Crowes’ Shake Your Money Maker. The latter two help me pinpoint the opening of Palmer Video as spring 1990, which was when I graduated from grammar school. Of the two events, I think Palmer’s opening was more momentous.
There were two important innovations Palmer Video brought. One is that they had a parking lot, which meant that my parents could drive me there and then sit in the car for sometimes as long as a half-hour as I scanned through the racks and decided which movie would be coming home with me. I’m sure this was a very exciting innovation for my parents.
The other innovation was that Palmer let you take the video box home with you. Electronic Junction, Victory, and Four Star Video had their own boxes (black for Electronic Junction, brown for Victory and Four Star…why am I retaining this information?) with their names inserted in the outer sleeve and the name—and corresponding number—of the movie written on them. But Palmer had see-through cases with the actual video box included. I know, right? Amazing! Now you could read the summary on the back of the box while you watched the movie. It was a brand new world! I remember thinking it was crazy that they trusted people to take the boxes home.
There are many reasons why it’s probably for the best that I don’t have children, but perhaps the most important one is that I would have probably spent years telling them about things like the history of video rental boxes and waiting at video-store counters for the movie you wanted, all to their vast indifference, eventually leading them to lash out against the world in unimaginable ways.
So, you’re welcome is all I’m saying.
I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent searching the internet for signs of Palmer Video, signs that other people think of Palmer Video as fondly as I do. I’ve found old articles (including one that claims the chain was named after Arnold Palmer for no discernible reason, which seems to be wildly inaccurate) and occasional random mentions here and there, but nothing really of note. Nary a Scoop Palmer commercial can be found. It’s upsetting.
But one glorious day not too long ago, while doing my usual “Palmer Video” Google search, I came upon an Etsy store selling T-shirts with “Palmer Video” on them. The same store was also selling T-shirts celebrating my local bowling alley, Victory Lanes. Both shirts even had the addresses on them. I paused and pondered whether this was some elaborate phishing scheme that was about to empty my bank account as soon as I purchased the shirts. But I was willing to take the risk. It seems to have worked out OK. That Palmer Video shirt (see above) makes me so happy. God bless you, Etsy merchant.
I also happened upon the above file photo while doing what was then a weekly search through the store of an eBay seller who had seemingly acquired the physical photo archive of the Staten Island Advance. After running through the names of local streets and neighborhoods in the search field, I typed in “Palmer Video.” To my surprise, something came back, and that something was this photo of Peter Margo, who founded Palmer Video along with Peter Balner and, more importantly, portrayed Scoop Palmer in the chain’s commercials. So, the photo is the closest thing I can get to a Scoop Palmer commercial. It had to be purchased.
Billboard did a supplement on the occasion of Palmer’s 10th anniversary in 1992, so if you want a full dive into the chain’s history and bios of its founders, that’s the place to go to on the internet. But the short version is that Margo convinced Balner to get into the video business by taking him to a video store on Staten Island (dying to know which one!).
"Margo kidnapped me one day and dragged me to Staten Island to see a video store in operation, and it was nothing short of amazing. People were standing three deep, yelling at the owner to take their $100 membership fees for the pleasure of doing business with them, and a light went on," Balner grins.
The first Palmer store soon opened in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the rest is history. Maybe history only I care about, but history nonetheless. I suppose Margo and Balner care about it too, assuming both are still with us. Well, I know one of them is.
At some point, I tried to find Scoop Palmer (I prefer to think of Margo as Scoop Palmer). I would like to blame this on the pandemic and being desperate to have things to do, but I’m pretty sure this all started before COVID. I did not need a pandemic to compel me to find a guy who was in commercials for a video store I loved. It comes naturally to me.
I really, really should have spent more time trying to talk to girls.
Anyway, while trying to track down a stranger in the least creepy way possible, I learned a lot about Margo’s life before Scoop Palmer, in which he was a well-respected billiards player (which is where he came in contact with Balner, who was originally in the billiard cue business). From that, and from conversations I read on billiards message boards, I determined he was still living in the area, and then I found him on Facebook, and I’m pretty sure I’ve determined his home address.
This can end in one of two ways, and so far I am happy to report that I have not sent this file photo to Scoop Palmer and asked him to sign it so I can display it in my apartment. But I have given that scenario a lot of consideration, particularly during the pandemic. And I’m not saying it won’t happen at some point, or that I won’t send him a message on Facebook that is almost as long as what I’ve written here about Palmer Video. But I’ve largely put it out of mind.
And then I checked his Facebook page a few months ago.
He posted a picture of him and his family at a restaurant on Staten Island. A restaurant I was in the very same day the picture was taken.
It is possible we were there at the same time.
It is great news for him that I did not know this at the time.
It is probably great news for me too.
But in case Scoop Palmer also Google searches “Palmer Video” on occasion, let’s just leave it at I salute you, Scoop Palmer, and the video chain you and your partner founded.
Thanks for all you did for me, and for letting us take the video boxes home.
Next time: The last great childhood video store discussed, and perhaps more than just discussed. Stay tuned!
I have total faith in your ability to find out what video store in Staten island was his inspiration.