Blockbusted

This is what we used to do on Saturdays.

First, head to Fred’s video on Charles Street and rent a movie. Or two. Order pizza or Chinese. Put the first movie in. Watch it. Rewind. Watch the other movie.

It was all VHS. I don’t ever remember renting DVDs.

Some people didn’t rewind, since rewinding supposedly wore out your VCR. I think that Fred’s fined the folks who didn’t rewind – at least fined them theoretically – and did the rewinding themselves. But every once in a while, you rented a movie and found that the selfish jackass who’d rented it before you hadn’t bothered to rewind. Nor had Fred.

We’d watch whatever we rented – rom-com, James Bond, whatever - supremely enjoying the fact that we could enjoy a relatively recent movie without having to go to the theater. (The existence of Fred’s absolutely cut down on our trips to the movie theater.) Sunday morning meant walking back to Fred’s before it opened and putting the movies in the slot in the wall, sometimes using the video box in hand as a battering ram to push the boxes that were clogging the chute.

When looking for movies, we never cared about the latest. Give it a couple of months, and it was going to be available. We could wait. But when we lucked out, and something new and shiny was there for the asking, well…

When you went on weekends, Fred’s – a tiny little place to begin with - was always crowded. Nabbing a movie before someone else got their hands on it always gave you a little feeling of triumph.

Fred’s has been gone for quite a while now, done in by Netflix. By infinite choice at the click of a button. By everything on demand.

We didn’t have a Blockbuster anywhere nearby. Blockbuster was a “box store” kind of a place. Suburbs had them, not cities.

We had our own little peculiar and particular stores, like Fred’s. We also had Gary Drug, a terrific little independent drugstore where they knew all their customers and took really good care of them. And Charles Supply, a combination hardware and general store where they knew all their customers and took really good care of them. Fortunately, we still have both of them.

But back in the day, when we had a jones for a movie, we went to Fred’s, or to the place around the corner on Cambridge Street.

Like a lot of folks, we rented a lot of movies over the years. Before, like a lot of folks, we didn’t.

I hadn’t thought of video rental in years. And then I saw on the news the other day that the two Blockbusters in Alaska are closing in another month or two. That will leave the one in Bend, Oregon as the last store standing. At the Blockbuster high point, there were 9,000.

The longevity of those Alaskan Blockbusters made sense. Alaskans haven’t had ubiquitous Wi-Fi, and broadcast reception in plenty of places has been substandard. But modernity final caught up with Alaska. Leaving Bend, which is privately owned and just licensed the Blockbuster name. Blockbuster dump the last of the stores it owned a few years ago.

Sandi Harding, the general manager of the Oregon store, who has worked for Blockbuster since 2004, said there are no plans to shut the store any time soon.(Source: NY Times)

Ms. Harding is absolutely hands-on. She buys her movies at Walmart and Target, and sells candy she scoops up at Costco.

“We still have that core group of customers that know we’re local, are very loyal and come in every week,” she said. “Everyone’s tired of sitting at home on their phones and their laptops and not having any personal interactions.”

Bend, Oregon, must be kind of a magical place, as it seems to be just about the only place in the US where “everyone’s tired of sitting at home on their phones and their laptops.”

Good luck to Sandi Harding. May it ever be so.