Do you get the feeling that someone is a little nostalgic? Just thinking of how long it took to get all those movies together and how long this person has been holding onto them is like, yikes. I can recall having upwards of 300+ DVD’s at one time, but this blows that record out of the water with ease since the number of movies on the walls of this small basement space have to exceed that by an amazing margin. This is a serious love of VHS that has driven this person to create this space and obviously a love of the old movie store experience that a lot of us still remember since back in the day wasn’t too insanely long ago to remember. Timothy Roberts of Dusty Old Thing can tell you more about this. Recall those days? There didn’t necessarily need to be a reason to go rent a movie, just the opportunity and the money in your pocket and the desire to see something new or watch something you’d seen a time or two before and wanted to view again. At one time the movie shelves were filled to the edges with VHS tapes that held two or three copies of the same movie behind them, remember that? The clear plastic cases that would protect the tape but also somehow get lost so danged easily that it was hard to imagine.
Of course movie stores had their downsides too since VHS tapes actually had to be rewound and if you didn’t do so there was a fee that was tacked on. If you returned them damaged or late there was a fee tacked on, if you didn’t return them at all you were paying a ridiculously high price that was sometimes more than the movie was even worth. Christian Roemer of Analog can get into this a little deeper in order to get the real feel of it. And if you didn’t get to the store early enough on a weekend or on a rainy day there was a good chance that you’d be stuck renting a couple of B movies just in case you didn’t like your first pick since all the new and popular movies would be selected already. Ah yes, those were the days, and those were the ups and downs of the VHS stores that eventually went to DVD’s and then eventually went broke as cable and streaming slowly but surely put them out of business. After all why would people visit a movie store when they can get the same movies downloaded at home for less or close to the same price? It would be easy to say that when streaming hit the internet that video stores heard the clock finally winding down, but it was coming before that. At some point in the 90s and into the 2000s DVD’s came out in a big way and VHS was on the way out. In fact unless a person is really willing to pay for a VCR or is determined to watch their favorite movies on VHS the tapes are virtually worthless at this point save for the nostalgia they bring. Anyone saying they have a better picture is living in a past that’s slowly being taken over, but again, the memories are really what keep VHS alive.
When you think of it the generations that were born after the advent of the DVD will never know about a few things unless their parents or grandparents teach them, such as the literal meaning of rewinding a movie, what to do if the tape unspools and needs to be fixed, or why we tended to blow into the tapes in the same manner as a Nintendo cartridge at times. I don’t recall this ever working that well but you get the point. These are things that younger folks won’t ever know about and to be realistic, it’s not that big of a deal really. There might be folks that can remember wandering the aisles of a movie store that would look at this and say ‘meh’ but a lot of us would be more likely to smile and remember the smell of the store, the feel of the threadbare carpet under our feet as we shuffled along, trying to find that one movie that would stand out that evening, and of course possibly smelling fresh popcorn depending on the movie store. Candy was always a big must when renting a movie, as was the popcorn, and some stores actually did sell toys, CD’s, and other various items to promote their movies in some way. It’s a step back in time to be certain since you don’t get to see this anymore, but it’s also something that makes you wonder just how much money this individual dropped on all this stuff to make it happen, since at one time VHS tapes were still pretty expensive. Now they almost give the things away unless they have some added value to them.
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