The lost civic life of movie rental stores

The end of interest-based 3rd places is one of the many things contributing to the compartmentalization / socioeconomic bubble of modern society.

People used to frequent in person things like specialty retailers, arcades, hobby clubs, religious groups, etc. When you meet real life people in person based on shared interests, you make connections across socioeconomic groups.

I just don't see nearly as much of this in todays society as 20+ years ago.

People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to, but even there a lot of kids activities have become economically stratified. Instead of playing in the local $50/year rec baseball league, there's tiers of travel teams to meet any budget.

This seems counter to my experience and memories. I'm old enough to remember the pre-VCR days so lived through the entire rise and fall of video rental. These stores were never a community gathering place or anywhere that you really met people. You'd go in, browse for a bit, pick a movie, pay and leave. This was the same at the locally owned shops and later when Blockbuster arrived and put all the local shops out of business.

I do think we've lost a lot of "civic life" in the past few decades but video rental stores aren't anything I remember fondly.

The loss of 3rd places is a big deal; but it seems weird to wax nostalgic over the remarkably brief period that movie rental stores were actually a thing. Blockbuster Video opened in 1985, was overtaken by Netflix starting in 2000, and died in 2010. There were small movie rental shops prior to 1985, but not long prior.

So many people are nostalgic for these kind of interest-based stores that there's a whole subgenre of simulation games.

For video stores, there's Retro Rewind: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3552140/Retro_Rewind__Vid...

There are also games like that for trading-card stores, video arcades, and record stores.

(I'm probably going to buy the record store one, "Wax Heads." Being a music-genre nerd and recommending bands to people is a fantasy that I was born 10 years too late to do in real life.)

More housing and fewer spaces for gathering seems to be the trend. Any open space near me became condos or protected habitat space (can’t even walk in because people trash it). There are practically no town squares. Parks are all gated by HOAs. Even the beach is encroached on by housing which means there isn’t enough parking. Where are people supposed to gather now and just enjoy the day? I see libraries, coffee shops, bars, parks, and beaches as the main zones. Not bad but there aren’t enough (or enough time to enjoy them).

Article should be titled 'The Lost Civic Life of Mom and Pop Stores'- no kid making $4.50 an hour is cultivating a third space atmosphere at Blockbuster, whereas any Mom and Pop place can do that, no matter what they sell.

Shopping with my kids I noticed we kinda have a replacement here in the UK in the shape of HMV (originally a spin off of His Master's Voice). When I was a kid it was mostly a record store, but now it's focused on what I'd call geek/"fandom" tat: posters, figurines, comics, band merch, etc. Whenever I'm dragged into one, it's always full of geek/fandom types hanging out.

Just as long as you pretend to not notice your neighbor come out of the curtained room...

> the drive-in theater took on much of the role that the earlier movie theater had played, serving as a third place for local youth and families where the space and interactions with other audience members were as important as the movie (if not more so). But even this drive-in culture began to disappear

I've been kind of puzzled, since the first time I gave it any thought, why "going to a movie" is culturally thought of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date. Much like dining out in a sit-down restaurant. Yet the expectation is that you sit in silence for 2 hours and spend maybe 5-10 minutes critiquing or raving as you walk out.

But now I'm wondering if the custom of doing this together is a vestigial one, formed in a time when the 'going to the cinema' was a more social event even as late as the drive-in era (I have never experienced a drive-in).

I talk about this all the time. The experience of going with your friends to Blockbuster or similar, walking around, browsing everything, deciding what you were renting then grabbing pizza made for some pretty memorable weekends.

Just having everything listed on 50 different streaming platforms isn't the same experience. There are things we really lose with efficiency gains.

It seems like the library has more movies than my local video store ever did at this point. But you can’t really talk there, and they don’t show movies on the screen. Maybe they should set up a separate section to give more of a 90s Blockbuster vibe with a dedicated movie librarian, that would be fun.

I feel like this overstates the point a bit. The video store was always just a means to an end for me, the clerks always sullen, the process of agreeing on a movie always long & difficult. Maybe I missed out on the phenomenon he's talking about.

more romanticizing of the bygone era. late fees (due at midnight!), restocking fees, etc; some of these fees to the tune of a new dvd/vhs; good riddance.

Where I live we still have a locally owned video rental store, though several years ago they put in a bar and now it's more a bar with a video section than a video store where you can get beer and watch movies. We do still rent when there's something we can't stream on one of the services we pay for; I much rather do that than give more $ to Amazon and the like.

> That same time-traveling video renter might find herself startled by the employee offering to recommend a movie, or by the knot of customers hanging out by the counter, shooting the breeze and discussing film.

What universe is this person from? I must have missed it...

I used to live under the guy that ran Lost Weekend on Valencia street. Held out till like 2014/2015. At the time I wasn't really sad about it but now I wish it was still around

Obligatory video from theonion: Blockbuster Offers Glimpse Of Movie Renting Past

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrPwOrf4sM

"What's so poignant about this time is the uncertainty"

This must be from a different era. In the 90s, people at our store used to stare at the shelves in silence. You certainly weren't striking up conversation with strangers there.

The screaming and explosions from the movie trailers playing full blast on a non-stop loop throughout the store over the PA didn't help.

Forever memorialized in Kevin Smith's Clerks

I wonder when we'll see articles on the lost civic life of social media? With increasing AI use, it is happening.

Someone should make a coffee shop that is also like an old school rental place that has a few CRT TVs with VCRs around and people can take movies down from some shelf and pop them in and watch them on a communal couch. Very third place.

I admit it, I've never returned that DVD, found it behind a couch years later, only told my mom a decade later.

[dead]

this article is trash. the "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" of someone who had a TV for parents.