I was driving by some old haunts today while shopping. There's different stores there now, but I got all these flashbacks of the old movie stores I used to rent from and some of my friends that used to work in them. Man, some of those stores had character not like these multi-corporated places like a Blockbuster on every corner.
Did anyone ever work at a video store? Hey that's how Quintin Tarantino got his start.
Posted by pettyfan (Member # 2260) on :
We had two locally owned video stores. One was huge, and had just about every movie imaginable, while the other one was much smaller. My mom knew the owners of the small one, so on my birthday I always got free movie rentals.
Posted by Pittsburghgirl (Member # 7514) on :
In my hometown, I used to get movies at a smaller video store. But he always had a good selection. If he didn't have a movie that you wanted, he'd take down your name and number and call you when it was returned and gave you a day to come and pick itup. It was only a 5 minute drive from my parents' house. Then when Giant Eagle, the huge grocery chain, opened up their video store, they put that guy outta business within a year. And gladly, Giant Eagle's video has gone by the way side. I hate to see big corps. run the little guy outta business. When I moved to Pittsburgh, I rented from Hollywood Video. Our local store closed last Feb. I don't know if all of them have closed or not, but the Hollywood Video corp. wasn't doing too well. Netflix has put a damper on all of the video rental places, even Blockbuster. Every time I drive by there, it's empty. I do miss browsing around looking at the videos, then dvd's. And that old guy's video store was pretty cool; since it was so small, it was filled to capacity with posters on the walls.
Posted by ISIS (Member # 1780) on :
The place I went to all the time, was called "Visions of Video". It was awesome. Every Friday night, I was in there. Sometimes my Aunt and I would go, and get movies and take them out to my grandparents, and I'd spend the night out there.
Alot of times I went with different guys...that I went out with, and we'd go get a movie and go watch it. Sometimes I went with a group of friends.
It was always fun to read the backs of the movies, and argue about which one to get.
I use to love going with my one friend and I always took a date with me, and we'd go to her boyfriend's parents house, and get pizza and watch scary movies all night. It was fun. We watched Slumber Party Massacre, and all those low budget B horror movies...they were the best movies for being on a date.
The video store was right next to the Pizza Hut.
I was just thinking the other day...that it has been at least 10 years since I have had a Pizza Hut pizza. I use to love pan pizza in the 80s. But, like everything it isn't the same any more. Bummer.
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
I agree with Netflix, is a machine with no emplyees really going to tell you what movie to watch? I had friends at the counter who useed to recommend stuff to me, those were the days. There was a popcorn machine too, the smell added to the movie environment. We used to have to take these little plastic velcro tags off the movie and bring it to the counter if we wanted an available title. You'd have to hit the store early Friday night to get the best titles. Ah...the pre-DVD days, be kind and rewind and all of that jazz.
I'm fortunate right now to know of a few smaller chains that are still in business and they specialize in rarer movies of horror, foreign, the good kind of stuff you can't get at Blockbuster, so thank god for those places.
Posted by ISIS (Member # 1780) on :
We had to take up a round coin thing that was dangling off a hook in front of the movie, it had the number of the movie on it.
I went to a bunch of video stores that went out of business in the 90s, and bought up tons of their movies- that's where I found lots of Out of Production stuff...I only wish I would have bought more.
Posted by jdocster (Member # 5752) on :
I used to rent from a couple of local places, then, Blockbuster, West Coast Video, and Hollywood Video.
I used to rent Betamax movies from this place called Monmouth Stereo in a town named Shrewsbury. They had the biggest selection around. Ahhhh the old betamax... Posted by Pittsburghgirl (Member # 7514) on :
dude, I still have my betamax. I have a few movies, probably around 10, that my mother-in-law picked up in a thrift store. One of them is Slapshot-awsome! The rest are old school type movies from the 50's and 60's. Hey, the betamax quality is so clear, seriously, I don't understand how we could have made the VHS so popular. Although I did see something on the History Channel that said the reason for the explosion of the VHS vs. Betamax was because the porn industry put all of their movies on VHS!
Posted by MotleyRulz (Member # 3598) on :
We used to rent from a couple of mom and pop stores until we got a Blockbuster in 1991 I think it was.....
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
Anyone own laserdiscs back in the day?
Posted by MotleyRulz (Member # 3598) on :
I remember seeing laserdiscs for a short while in stores. Weren't they bad to rot eventually and that was one of the reasons they were phased out?
Posted by ISIS (Member # 1780) on :
My Grandma had a Laser Disc Machine. I remember she had the movies:
Raiders of the Lost Arc The African Queen
and I know my Aunt and I watched Purple Rain on it too.
They were really cool.
I remember when she got them...they thought they were going to be the big thing, because they were like a giant CD, and wouldn't wear down.
But, they didn't make it long.
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
I acquires a few laserdiscs after the fact of music such as Berlin, XTC and Duran Duran. I am hoping I will take them to my friends place in Ottawa to finally watch them as he still has his player.
Posted by jdocster (Member # 5752) on :
quote:Originally posted by Pittsburghgirl: dude, I still have my betamax. I have a few movies, probably around 10, that my mother-in-law picked up in a thrift store. One of them is Slapshot-awsome! The rest are old school type movies from the 50's and 60's. Hey, the betamax quality is so clear, seriously, I don't understand how we could have made the VHS so popular. Although I did see something on the History Channel that said the reason for the explosion of the VHS vs. Betamax was because the porn industry put all of their movies on VHS!
I think you're right about that. Shame. Betamax is better than VHS... Posted by Mr. Jack Burton (Member # 4673) on :
The death of the video store is a real sad one for me right now. But when they charge $6 for a new rental when you can buy it a month after its out for like 10 bucks, then what do they expect??
Still, RIP video stores.. Posted by JCWBobC (Member # 2525) on :
I worked in videos store from 1986, right out of high school, until Oct. of 1999. Before I started working there I was a customer and was renting movies almost every day. I would rent the movies so I could copy them and got friendly with one of the clerks. When an opening came up he called me and got me the job. It was just a small mom & pop but they had 2 locations so I had twice the amount of movies to choose from. I still have a bunch of posters of 80's movies like Surf Ninjas Must Die and a cloth hanging of Rocky 4 with pins from ET, Back to the Future, and others attached to it.
In 1990 they small store got bought out by a chain called Talk of the Town owned by Shop Rite supermarkets. I was devastated because I had been their for 4 years and loved my job. I ended up getting hired by the new store but ended up switching to Saturday Matinee, which was a sales only store in the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, NJ. While I was managing that store I took a job in a Easy Video in my town, where I stayed until they closed down in 1999.
I miss the customers who would come in and spend an hour just talking about movies. I don't miss the customers who complained about late fees or blamed me for the bad movie they picked out to watch.
As for Laserdiscs I still have around 150 in my collection. Lots of 80s & 90s comedies and action movies.
Bob
Posted by Devolution (Member # 1731) on :
Devolution here,
I love Legal Sea Food at the Garden State Plaza. But as a mall it is a mob scene. It's never not packed.
We are DEVO
Posted by Ronnie (Member # 465) on :
i worked at a video store for 4 years, it was my first job right out of high school. i loved it.
i used to love when my mom would take my brother and i to the vid store on fridays after school... it wasn't every week so when we got to go, it was a treat. we were only allowed one rental a piece. i was always in the comedy or horror section renting old 80s movies, where i had no real idea what the movie was about but i would stare at the cool cover boxes for the vhs tapes.
i don't belong to netflix or anything. i like the tradition of taking my daughter to the video store and letting her look at what she wants and then pick something out. we only go on fridays or saturdays.
we used to have a lot of small chain vid stores. but once blockbuster and hollywood video became the places to go to.. those other stores closed down. we went to VIDEO MADNESS, VIDEO UPDATE, KJ VIDEO & SUPERSTAR VIDEO. their older movies sections were great.
Posted by bandit (Member # 6296) on :
The local gas station 15km down the road.We used to ride down there on our mopeds renting videos along with the portable moviebox player.A few years later i moved to a large city,and i remember how the video store selection impressed me The gas station is still there renting out movies.They have around 50 titles.Now and then i still go there.
Posted by MotleyRulz (Member # 3598) on :
Did anyone else have an Action Video in their town? I remember being around 13-14, my mom giving me her card to use, and riding to the local one on my bike. She kept getting charged these late fees on stuff we never rented from this always b!tchy clerk. This particular store had a system where they'd slide your card thru some sort of bar code reader everytime you'd rent. Come to find out, my mom's card had gotten creased right where the bar code was supposed to be read. The reader was reading the membership of another customer everytime as mom's was off by only like a number. We were getting charged with someone else's late fees. Needless to say mom was p!issed and we never went back there again.....
Posted by EleanorJune (Member # 7024) on :
We rented from a place called Felpausch. But the F was backwards. I can remember walking up and down the aisles forever. I knew where every movie was in that place. If they got something new, I could tell right away before I even saw it on the shelf.
Posted by imawalkingcorpse (Member # 1675) on :
There was a little video store in the shopping center right across the street from my neighborhood. I still have the Michael Myers standup from Halloween 4 from that place. (It is now a UPS Store).
Posted by Nostalgic for the '80's (Member # 37454) on :
I remember small mom & pop video rental places around where I used to live in the mid-late '80's. There was one that was connected to a small grocery store - kind of like the one in "Clerks" (1994).
Posted by thenodfather (Member # 8732) on :
In Ireland there was a chain store called Xtravision and also a lot of one off privately owned places. With Xtravision being a nationwide store is said to see it reduced to a vending machine in the corners of supermarkets in later years. Netflix and streaming killed so much. I have a memory too of a place that you could go online and see what they have, pick a film and they would send it out to you by post with a return envelope.
Posted by thenodfather (Member # 8732) on :
Do anyone used to get fined if you brought back the video tapes and they weren't rewound? They would charge a pound because they didn't want to have to go to the trouble of rewinding them and they didn't like giving out tapes that weren't to customers. That was Xtravision.
[ 19. July 2021, 15:14: Message edited by: thenodfather ]
Posted by TheHoff (Member # 37515) on :
quote:Originally posted by thenodfather: Do anyone used to get fined if you brought back the video tapes and they weren't rewound? They would charge a pound because they didn't want to have to go to the trouble of rewinding them and they didn't like giving out tapes that weren't to customers. That was Xtravision.
No, mine were mainly from Blockbuster and they had a few rewind machines at one point.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)