Anybody else here remember video rental outlets?

[Metalhead]

Every Friday night when I was in high school, I would take some of the money I earned at my PT job and go to a local VHS rental outlet. I often either rented the latest anime releases or I went to the horror section and rented whatever had the most outrageous cover art. Those were fun days. Streaming just is not the same kind of thrill.

 

[Skittlebisquit]

I remember. There was an independent one and a larger chain store in my town. The indie one had all the good stuff, the other had bright lights and pretty people in uniforms. There was a slot to put the returns in, like at the library.

 

[Sherlock77]

Spending over an hour negotiating with friends which movie to rent while endlessly wandering around... Good memories!

 

[VictorR]

Yep, and there's the 48h rentals for the new releases that cost $7 or something, and don't forget the late fees!

 

[Sherlock77]

And the movie Clerks, cinematic brilliance, Silent Bob and Jay...

 

[Metalhead]

Yep, and there's the 48h rentals for the new releases that cost $7 or something, and don't forget the late fees!

I gotta give my local video rental place props for waiving my late fees after I failed to return the films back on time when I had pneumonia.

 

[Raggamuffin]

There was an independent video store in our village. I seem to recall it had an odd, smokey scene to it inside. I recall going there at a very young age. I was intrigued by all the big shelves with VHS cases. They were oversized cases in opaque black cases. I found it a novelty that each of the cases was empty. I used to open them hoping perhaps someone had left a tape inside one.

I never used Blockbusters. But I did stay at a friends once when I was a teenager for about a week, and we rented some films from a local one in the nearby town.

Ed

 

[Lemon Zing]

There was one I went to years ago called Movie Xpress, but then it became a tanning parlour. There was a Blockbuster Video on Great Junction Street in Edinburgh, which I think is a British Heart Foundation now.

Ah, how the times have changed with Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube.

 

[Metalhead]

Also remember renting the badly dubbed grind house martial arts films, many of which had a hippie voice over the fight scenes saying lines like, “Great Kung Fu!”

 

[Luca]

I remember Blockbuster!
We still had a VCR and a 90s “box tv” until about 2010 I think I don’t remember if it still worked.
My parents re-did their house in the early 2010s, when I was in college, and everything from the old days got sold or thrown out. But I remember us having older technology for a bit longer than most people did. My parents still have a house phone, I don’t think most people do anymore. I don’t have one.

 

[BrokenBoy]

Oh man, you're bringing back memories here! I use to go to such a rental place. It was a small business and not apart of a chain. It was fun. As a kid I had dreams of working there. The place also had such an interesting smell. I was sad when it closed down.

 

[Thinx]

I rented a lot of episodes of Voyager New Generation and Deep Space 9 from Blockbuster. It was a kind of benign and legal addiction. And when they sold them off I bought them. Piles of them! Later I gave them to my brother in law who could still play them. Good times...

 

[Loren]

I remember one that was called Vidiots. It was on the way to the ice rink I skated at. It was known for having more obscure films, that one might not have been able to find in a larger/ more mainstream store, and I remember having been intrigued by the appearance of the people going in and out of there. They were different and that appealed to me. I haven't thought about that place for ages.

 

[SusanLR]

Those were good times.
We had a Blockbuster just a few blocks from the house.
A Walgreens is there now.

It was fun just looking at all the cassettes and renting just what I wanted.
Always looking for when they put them on sale, too.
The library had them to check out also.
I loved VHS and always had a VCR under the TV to record shows I wanted to keep and watch when
I wanted.

We had the square box TV's until 2007.
I liked them better and had a fit at how the first flat screen looked when I got it home.
All those wires and stuff sticking out behind and I didn't like the rectangular screen.

I still have a home phone along with a small cell phone.
Won't give into the Smart phone phenom.

 

[Qoyote]

I remember Blockbuster!
We still had a VCR and a 90s “box tv” until about 2010 I think I don’t remember if it still worked.
My parents re-did their house in the early 2010s, when I was in college, and everything from the old days got sold or thrown out. But I remember us having older technology for a bit longer than most people did. My parents still have a house phone, I don’t think most people do anymore. I don’t have one.

That's just like my family, I think we even ditched the VCR and the TV about the same year. Our Blockbuster closed pretty early so I don't think I actually went in. One of my best memories is a couple years ago we took the other big box TV to the dump. It was hilarious.

See, Mom had us all move her office 6+ months earlier and I found this German polka cassette from the 70's. No one knew where it came from or why she had it, it was just there. We never got around to playing it but it was a long drive to the dump so we put it on. We were talking the whole way laughing about who knows what and we switched to a local Austin band from the 80's I've never heard again, but we put the polka back on and turned up the volume at the checkpoint so the guys would think we were crazy. Dad almost did a funny accent but he didn't. I think they were crazy too though cause somehow they got to the second checkpoint before we did even though we couldn't see a car.

Dumping the TV was surreal. I'm sure there weren't really that many but I remember a sea of hundreds and hundreds of other TVs (just TVs), and there was absolutely nothing but dirt and hills around. It was like a magazine photo.

That trip'll always stick out in my mind.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Yeah, I remember Blockbusters.

However, the one that me, my Dad and my brother would frequent was a video store called Apollo - which was how I first saw films such as DragonHeart, Attila and Godzilla (1998).
Sadly, that one closed down over a decade ago.

 

[Bolletje]

I would spend so much time at the video rental store each weekend trying to decide what to rent. And I spent so much money on late fees

 

[Misery]

Oh yeah, I remember them. Not just Blockbuster, but others too. They were a major part of my childhood. I didn’t go to rent movies, I went to rent games. It was always exciting.

I also remember when they were all closing down. A few of the ones around here sold off their stuff when they closed… I actually still have the cases (with those “permastruct” things stuck on) for most of those, thick plastic things that each cartridge was in, and the cartridges are still marked as property of those rental stores.

It’s actually one of those things I try not to think about too much as it just gets me all depressed if I do that.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Our family didn't even own a VCR until mid the nineties, and at Blockbuster, in my town at least, you could rent a VCR. On payday, my parents would do that. They'd rent a VCR, a kid's movie, and an adult's movie. It was bliss. I felt so cool.

I do have a funny story though. My parents got a DVD player in the very late nineties. I remember walking in the living room, and Mom and Dad were sitting on the floor, perplexed, whispering to each other. My brother and I asked them what was going on, they replied that they had just finished watching their first DVD and were trying to figure out how to rewind it so they would be able to watch it again. You know, "Be kind, rewind".

My brother and I looked at each other incredulously, and replied "It's a DVD! It's like a CD! You don't have to rewind it."

Mom and Dad looked at each other, jaws dropped, and you could practically see the lightbulbs flash above their heads.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

You know, one of the secrets of the universe is that you can go to a thrift shop and buy all the videos and dvds you want, and they'll be cheaper than a subscription to those useless movie streaming platforms where you have to pay $3.99 a movie anyway.