Outside Perception
Amin n'rangwa edanea
Blockbuster Video – Making it a night!
I’m betting most of you know about this one, Blockbuster Video and it’s competitors made it a simple and relatively inexpensive way to have a family event. You could go to a video store and get two movies a couple of bags of popcorn and some soda for under $20. They had old movies and new. Video games for all consoles and snacks to go with it all.
That’s not the missing part though, not really. We have Netflix now, Hulu, Amazon, and separate channels for each TV station plus hundreds of other streaming choices. The missing part, the fun part, was the people. The employees, the ones who knew every movie in the building. You could go in and ask them for a movie recommendation and they could and would help you, because it was fun. The sharing of mutual experiences in a group. Customers, employees, even the vendors that would deliver things… “Hey how was (movie title).
I can still play a good game of Seven Degree’s of Kevin Bacon. If you followed along with last years A to Z challenge, you read about a lot of movies that’s what’s missing from Netflix and the others. That sense of community, of shared experiences with a person, face to face. Blockbuster and other Video stores like, Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery, Hastings, Family Video and more helped bring people together.
There are still some left… If you look at the date for the tweet above… well you can see. It’s a franchise and there are more than one left. While the corporate mindset has poofed away making it more… well weirdly funny, you can follow them on Twitter at Loneblockbuster
It’s a shame the internet took these places from us. I know people say RedBox and Netflix did it, in part that’s true. The larger issue was Bandwidth though and the ability to just click a button to watch something. Blockbuster still has a few stores left. They still have a streaming service owned by Dish Network and they still have those of us that remember how much fun it was. It’s not the same though, the sense of it, the feel… Plus Chet, Carl and Ray, The Dancing Baby…
What was your favorite Video store, tell me a story.
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5 Comments on “Blockbuster Video – Making it a night!”
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Outside Perception 
We had a Blockbuster Video and a Hollywood Video close to us for years. We couldn’t get over how outdated their checkout printers were (the old laser type with the long sheets of paper and the tiny holes on the sides). The people were friendly and funny, it’s true but toward the end there were less and less movies on the shelves. We did manage to score some good ones when they were having the going out of business sale. Side note: After your comment on my post about letting MIchaels know what i was doing, I attached a link to my blog on their “official” facebook page. We’ll see what happens. I’ll tell my store manager tomorrow when she gives me my final check 🙂
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Good deal… Yeah I had thermal printers in my stores. The old dot matrixxx ohhh my,
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I used to love, love Blockbuster, I watched all the movies when they came out, and they had such a good collection of the independent ones as well.
But I feel like the decline in quality of movies overall also played a part in doing in Blockbuster. Now TV shows are the longer-form medium, and there are so many good ones, I hardly watch movies.
I do miss my Blockbusters, though. Even if it’s awfully nice to not get off the couch!
@IsaLeeWolf
A Bit to Read
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One of my favorite tweeters!!! Man how I miss wandering the aisles of any video rental store with great anticipation and excitement for all the potential adventures that awaited me that weekend!
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lol to the tweet. I used to be a blockbuster member. Solely for videogames though. It was always a better alternative to buying them.
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