You've probably heard the news by now: Blockbuster has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. I've heard many a person say they'd seen it coming, well of course you did, the writing was on the wall years ago. This is not going to be about Blockbusters corporate failings or their final desperate throws. No, this is about losing something.
We have now lost an experience: going to the video store. Much like going to the record store (or late night record shop if you're into impulsive/compulsive/insane things). One could go to the video store and browse for hours, in fact it has long since been a running joke that it's never easy to rent a movie. But just because it was "difficult" didn't mean it was a bad thing.
Sometimes you would go in knowing what you wanted and other times just to look and find something. I loved going in to a Blockbuster or Hollywood video or Super Duper Video and wandering. The box art of a movie might catch my eye, and then I would rent something that I had never even heard of before.
Yes, of course you can browse with our modern alternatives like NetFlix and RedBox but it just isn't the same. It's to early for a nostalgic look at video stores, but I can just picture myself as an old man telling my grandchildren about how we used to go to a store to borrow movies, and you could just walk around looking at all the different titles.
I suppose it's just odd for me to think that this experience I've known since I was a little kid is going to, for the most part, be gone forever. I don't mean to make it sound like such an earth shatteringly big deal, I just see it as something that a few years from now will be commented on like "hey, isn't it weird that we haven't like been to a store to rent t movie in like years" before it vanishes from memory.
Honestly I love RedBox and Netflix, I think they're great, but I'm going to miss the aimless wandering. It reminds me of a Shepard, I didn't care where I was going, because the journey is the worthier part.
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