Video Store Rewind: A Love Story in Two Parts (Part 2)
(Rewind to part 1 here if you haven’t read it already. Or if you just want to read it again because you can’t get enough of it. I’m fine with either reason.)
I don’t remember the exact timeline (and, honestly, I feel good about not remembering it, because maybe I got rid of that information in order to store something useful), but it wasn’t too long after Palmer Video came to Forest Avenue (months maybe?) that Blockbuster Video arrived just up the block. In retrospect, this was the beginning of the end for video stores in Staten Island, but at the time, two video superstores within about a minute drive from each other (and maybe a 5-to-10 minute drive from my house) was cause for celebration. Well, a celebration in my head, which is where most of my celebrations take place.
Unlike Palmer, which was in a standalone building, Blockbuster was in a newly constructed strip mall that also had a Roy Rogers in it. If you had asked me at the time what I had hoped heaven would be like, I would have responded, “Well, there would have to be a video store with a Roy Rogers next to it.” Videos, two pieces of fried chicken (white meat only, please) and a biscuit, and fries really covered a lot of what I required at the time. The mall had the Roy Rogers, plus a Kay-Bee Toys, a Waldenbooks, and a bunch of record stores (all of which would have also found a place in my heaven, and still might), but it lacked a video store, and was a significant drive away. This Blockbuster/Roy Rogers dream team was just down the street. What a time to be alive!
Our Blockbuster was also two floors. That’s right, two floors! This was an exciting development, though probably not for my parents who now had to wait even longer for me to pick a video. It was also probably not great news for people with issues going up and down stairs, because all the good stuff was on the second floor. Again, they really didn’t have that much different from Palmer (and they didn’t let you take the boxes home), and they might have even had fewer movies (Palmer, after all, had an adult section, and Blockbuster branded itself as more of a family place), but they had more copies of new releases. And that was really the most important thing at the time.
Blockbuster also brought the Art of Stalking the Front Desk to a new level. The return slot for videos was right before you walked in, so the clerks would put the returned videos in rows on the counter before putting them back on the shelf. Whereas returned videos would sort of trickle in at Four Star, the sheer volume of business meant that there was a steady flow of returns at Blockbuster. You could just stand there at the front and look through everything that was just returned and try to beat your fellow customer to the punch for a freshly returned copy of What About Bob? This was an exciting night out in the 1990s, kids!
Honestly, though, it’s these sorts of rituals that I miss about video stores. It is undoubtedly more convenient the way things are now, where you can find pretty much any movie you want in a few minutes, stream it if you subscribe to the right service, watch it whenever you have the time, and not have to worry about late fees. But where’s the excitement and joy in that? Where’s the jolt you’d get when you happened to be standing at the counter when the movie you were looking for was returned? Where’s the satisfaction you’d get from the crack and rattle of opening a video case? Streaming has certainly made life easier, but it feels like that ease cheapens things and sucks out some of the joy.
And, please, for the last time, get off my lawn. I do not want to have to call your parents, but I will do it.
Blockbuster had a good run, but it couldn't run that hot forever. By the time college came around, Blockbuster was an afterthought. DVDs were a thing by then (we were not early adopters on DVD players either; we were barely adopters at all), and they didn't have the magic of videotapes for me. Again, better technology, better value, better everything. But just not videotapes and, thus, a poor substitute.
I did join one more video store in the DVD age (Hollywood Video), but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. A love that was once so deep that I rented a VCR for a week and made my mom get a membership at a video store upstate that was a half-hour drive away while we were on vacation had finally grown cold.
When the Blockbuster chain shut down all the local stores, I popped into one in Hoboken (the one in Staten Island had passed long ago, preceded in death by the Roy Rogers) and bought a bunch of DVDs I didn't need or particularly want, just to have something to remember the chain by. I'm pretty sure I still haven't watched any of them.
Blockbuster popped into my mind sporadically, when I found I still had our membership card, or when Target started selling Blockbuster shirts (yes, please). But when I heard about a documentary on the last remaining Blockbuster, the old flame was rekindled.
The Last Blockbuster is a very entertaining documentary about the store in Bend, Oregon, that is still flying the Blockbuster flag. I highly recommend it (it’s currently streaming on Netflix, which, as the documentary points out, is less responsible for Blockbuster’s demise than you might think), particularly if your love of video stores is as strong (or at least close to as strong) as mine.
The movie made me want to go to the store, but Oregon seemed like a long trip to go see a Blockbuster store, especially one with DVDs rather than videotapes. The only thing I knew about Bend was that a friend of mine used to live there, and that wasn’t really pushing me in the direction of booking a flight. I wasn’t even sure one could book a flight to Bend. So I put the thought out of mind.
And then I decided to take a train from Chicago to Los Angeles.
And then I decided to go to Seattle and knock T-Mobile Park off my stadium list.
And then, when looking for ways to break up the train ride from Los Angeles to Seattle, I saw Bend listed among the cities included on the Amtrak schedule.
I think you see where this is going. Or, more accurately, where I was going.
The train from Los Angeles doesn’t go directly to Bend. You get off at Klamath Falls, Oregon, and then a bus goes from there to Bend. I nervously watched the train arrival timetables in the weeks before the trip, as there was a three-and-a-half-hour window between when the train was expected to arrive and when the bus to Bend departed. And sometimes the train ran four hours late. I wasn’t super interested in being stranded in Klamath Falls, but it turns out the connecting buses wait for the train regardless. It didn’t matter for my trip anyway, as we arrived pretty much on time. Good job, Amtrak!
But getting there was a bit of a struggle, because by the time I got on the train in Los Angeles, I was becoming more convinced I had COVID. My throat was a little more sore than the day before, though not much of a nuisance, but I felt a little hot as I took my seat. I had also just lugged my bags through several blocks in downtown Los Angeles so I could squeeze in one more doughnut, so I figured that might be contributing to the temperature rise. In any event, I decided to carry on, with an N95 clamped on my face super-tight for pretty much the entire 22-hour ride (save for the few breaks we had along the way, where I scampered outside, took my mask off, shoved granola in my face, and then reboarded). This was definitely not CDC-approved, and probably not the most responsible thing I could have done, but, at that point, I wasn’t sure what else to do. And if I wasn’t excited about the possibility of being stranded in Klamath Falls, I was definitely not jazzed about quarantining there for 10 days upon arrival.
So, onward I went.
My seatmate for the trip was not chatty at all, and, in fact, told the guy across the aisle to keep it down because people were trying to sleep. It was around 10:30 a.m. when he expressed this thought, and I feel like that’s probably outside of the “people are trying to sleep” window. To be fair, though, the talking guy was talking in such a creepy way (think Sling Blade) that it was jarring. Roughly 10 minutes into the trip, he started singing and then asked the woman who had the unfortunate assignment of sitting next to him if she liked to sing too. She left and never returned. If this was a strategy to have a two-seater all to himself, it was brilliant.
There was some tension between my seatmate and Johnny Slingblade for an hour or so, and it culminated in my seatmate asking the conductor for the second time if there was anything he could do to stop the other guy from talking so loud. After the conductor said he didn’t hear anyone talking loud and then left, Johnny Slingblade, in the creepiest tone possible, just said “Excuuuuuuse me?” A chill literally went through me. A chill that only grew chillier when I got a peek at the guy, who was cultivating a biker-meets-Home-Alone-neighbor look.
But peace prevailed, I slept for a few hours with a mask clamped on my face (do not recommend), waking up occasionally to run through the panic of “Is it hot? Am I hot? Now I feel cooler. Oh wait, are those chills? No, wait, I think I’m fine” and soon enough we were in Klamath Falls. The bus turned out to really be more of a shuttle. There were seats for 14, and there were only four of us, five counting the driver, who seemed to be desperately looking for the OK from anyone to start talking politics and the state of the world. We held firm, and other than a story where the driver referred to the Spinners as an “old black band,” it was a largely uneventful ride to Bend.
And then, after dropping my bags at the motel, it was time to go back to a Blockbuster.
I had seen the store in the documentary, of course, but you see lots of things in movies. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go all the way across the country to see them. Right? Right?! Anyway, it was with great joy that I stepped out of the hot sun and into the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon. Would I have preferred if they had videotapes instead of DVDs, or at least a just-for-show section of old videotapes? Of course. But that would make it a museum or an antique shop, which it is not. It is a fully functional Blockbuster serving the people of Bend who prefer to still rent DVDs, or prefer the communal experience, or whatever the reason they have for keeping this Blockbuster alive.
There is a section of the store devoted to more of a museum-like vibe, with clippings of articles about the store and the documentary, as well as several pieces of Russell Crowe memorabilia, a gift from a Blockbuster in Alaska, which had been gifted the items by John Oliver in an attempt to keep that store in business. Alas(ka), it didn’t work, but the memorabilia can still be enjoyed by the public in what is now the Last Blockbuster.
And there’s also plenty of merch you can buy at the Last Blockbuster, and, as you might have guessed, there is now plenty of Last Blockbuster merch in my apartment. It felt important to do, to do my part to keep the Last Blockbuster in business for as long as possible. If you’d like to do your part, and maybe don’t want to plan a trip around going to Bend, you can buy stuff at their website.
Despite my preference for VHS, it still felt good to be in the Last Blockbuster, to stand among the familiar blue and yellow, to see what the employees recommended, to be taken back for a bit. I'm still trying to move forward as best I can as the offspring of late adopters (I got a Smart TV during the pandemic!), but that doesn't mean I can't be comforted knowing that the Last Blockbuster, a tiny piece of my upbringing, many times removed and all the way across the country, is still alive and kicking.
And, oh yeah, I brought my old membership card with me (you can buy a new one on the Last Blockbuster site if you miss yours). As I was attempting to frame the card properly in a photo outside, a fellow traveler wearing a Speaker City T-shirt came out, saw me taking a photo, and, looking back toward the Last Blockbuster, said, “That's a trip, man.” I laughed and agreed and then for no reason at all decided to inform him I'd brought my membership card and that I'd kept it all these years.
He looked at me and laughed.
“Why?” he asked.
“That's an excellent question,” I said.
He headed back to his car and I went on with my photo shoot.
And a few minutes later, as I was taking a selfie near another sign, a woman got out of her car holding two DVDs in her hand.
“Do you want me to take your picture?”
“No, I think I got it. But thanks!”
“That's the most popular photo spot in the city.”
“I bet. I'm sure there are a lot more beautiful spots around that you'd rather people were taking pictures of.”
“Oh no, I love it! Parents bring their kids and they take their pictures in front of the sign. I think it's great!”
“Well, I'm glad it's still here.”
“Me too!”
And then we went our separate ways.
She gets it.
And that's why I kept the card, and came to Bend with it.
For family, for youth, for memories.
Thanks for the memories, Video Stores of My Youth.
And thanks for waiting in the car, Mom and Dad. Sorry I took so long.
An addendum: After leaving Bend (via a slightly larger bus with many hikers in the midst of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which I guess is more ambitious than going to the Last Blockbuster) and then hopping back on the Amtrak in Portland and eventually arriving in Seattle, I dropped my bags off in my hotel room and left for a quick quest for doughnuts and records before that night's ballgame. After striking out at a few record stores, I finally found a good one that also happened to sell old videos. As I looked through the music video selection, I spotted a Warren Zevon concert I didn't even realize was on VHS (alas, it was revealed to be a bust upon arrival home, but it has a cool red case!) and then a video I might have rented at Blockbuster, with a title ironic enough in the present situation to make me smile. I pulled the tape out from its spot on the shelf and look what I found.
The times they have a-changed, but me and video stores still got a thing going on.