Blockbuster Busts Out

In case you haven't heard, or in case you're surprised to learn they still had any stores open, Blockbuster has officially decided to close all its corporate retail rental stores. I for one welcome the news, remembering as many others do Blockbuster's awful customer service, its policy of being hard nosed about late fees, and its limited selection and tendency to focus too much on carrying dozens of copies of the latest releases and very few foreign or independent films. (What kind of slogan is "Be kind. Please rewind."?) It's also ironic, of course, that Blockbuster now faces the same fate as the many mom-and-pop neighborhood rental stores it put out of business.

Nonetheless, the story has me feeling nostalgic about the video-rental glory days, physically going to the video store and ritualistically gazing at the empty boxes of available movies, deciding want to rent for a quiet night at home. Physically perusing the shelves at the video-rental store, as opposed to going through endless lists of streaming videos, seemed more like shopping, the promise of the perfect rental remaining tantalizingly just out of sight as you looked at all the available videos, each one a mystery, its contents only suggested by the cover and the names of stars. I used to drive partners mad as I lingered looking at all the different movie boxes. I sometimes wanted to go down every row, see everything that was available, as opposed to just grabbing the first promising video.

With VHS movies in particular, those boxy, worn-out covers often revealed forgotten gems, obscure movies that had only been printed once. I remain nostalgic particularly about the magic of VHS, the first home-rental movie format (if we conveniently forget about Beta, since I never had a Betamax). The movies felt like real movies in those boxy, book-like packages, even if the actual video quality of the movies was substandard and grainy by today's standards (and even in comparison to the resolution of standard TV in those days -- VHS movies always had that strange, cartoonish quality; you knew when you were watching a "video").  But there was something odd and promising about being able to fast forward and scan through movies to find your favorite scenes, something real about the way the video tapes rewound, clicked in the machine, and whirred and buzzed when played. Video tapes also gave us our first opportunity to watch movies at home, at our own leisure, without waiting for a favorite to come back on to TV broadcast.

I remember my last physical video rental, a DVD a friend and I hunted down after a few drinks. It was 2008, and he was determined that I see Superbad, because I hadn't seen it, and so we took a trip to the last of the neighborhood video store holdouts in my area, a store that has since closed down. Streaming video wasn't yet available, at least on my system, so the only real option was to find a video store and find the movie. Video stores gave you that opportunity for adventure, a hunting trip to the local video store to find that movie you had to watch that night. Sometimes you even had to buy the video if it wasn't available for rental.

Now our options seem endless, and the chance for a hunting adventure, a drive to the local video store, seems ridiculous and quaint, just a few years after my last trip. We still have our DVDs and Blu-Rays, of course, but they too will be quickly fading. Soon we will never have to leave the house at all.