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KnockBack, Episode 23: The Video Store (Patreon)

Published:
2018-07-19 16:00:00
Edited:
2019-01-08 23:02:47
Imported:
2022-01

Downloads

Content

In the late 1970s, something amazing happened: People didn't have to go to the movie theater anymore to watch films. Crazier yet, they didn't have to be home at specific times to watch TV. The same device made both revolutions possible: The VCR. But the VCR didn't reach its full potential until the advent of the video store in the early '80s, and it's here that we begin our tale, reminiscing over stories about our shops. What did we rent? What kind of people worked there? What was it like watching the whole industry shrivel up and die? Let's chat about the analog days, where you had to leave your house to find something to watch.

Files

Comments

Michael Ferrari

Dude, nice! I'm excited for this one. My first job was at a Blockbuster, and I have fond memories of a little video store built into a Stop and Shop in my hometown. I scored some excellent SNES games when it closed too.

Jonah Gespacho

First job was at Blockbuster! I hope I didn’t harass anyone over the 9.99 movie pass. Side note: the one or two games at the store that were always rented out, we got first grabs before the release date. Apologies if you always called about Gex: Enter The Gecko. Apologies. To whomever rented Look Who’s Talking Too, I agree the $84.50 late fee was over the top. If it helps, I saw none of that late fee treasure stash.

John Quinn

I’m pumped for this one. I have so many good memories of going to the local video store in my town as a kid. It’s how I discovered Star Wars. So much nostalgia.

Jason Kelley

Super excited for this. I was just talking to my wife the other day about my video store nostalgia. Hi Dagan! "And especially thank you to all of you out there that tweet at me really terrible shit." I'm probably going to lose my job now because I can't stop laughing!

Felipe Delfin

I’m stoked for this topic. The video store was a key contributor to my love for movies and video games. I still remember the day my parents rented Alien. My mom told me to hold up 7 fingers (for each member of the crew) and begin counting down. I was 8... it’s my favourite movie now.

Joe Bellotta

I live in Youngstown, Ohio which is on the PA boarder and there's probably 250,000 people in the whole surrounding metro area and there's an absurd amount of Family Video stores around. The internet around here is some of the fastest you can get in the country and yet these stores are always packed with people. I still go occasionally if I don't feel like browsing thru Netflix or Amazon. I know they're huge in general in Ohio which is far from being rural since it's the 7th most populous state in the country. It just amazes me with how many Family Video stores are around in this day an age. Anyway great episode guys!

Joe Bellotta

I seen recently on Twitter that an employee that worked for a company cleaning up one of closed the Toys R Us stores foubd an empty Mario Kart 64 case under a shelf haha.

Kenny Gutzler

Cool moment when you were talking about movies you (possibly) made your parents suffer through. In my head I thought of Little Giants, not even a second before you mentioned it. Icebox and Spike - classic!

Jason Kelley
>>13959893

Hell yeah, dude! I live in the Pittsburgh suburbs and there's a Family Video within a mile of my house. Nice place, always has people in it. Sometimes my wife and I go there to browse for stuff we then go home and stream. Dick move, I know.

Anonymous

I can’t wait to listen. My 1st job was at Hollywood Video. I spent so much time there even when I wasn’t working.

Matthew Perry

I used to rent the PlayStation from blockbuster which was cool because I couldn't afford one at the time ! Look forward to this one , will listen on the way home from work :-)

Jeff Pollard

Can't wait to listen to this one. I worked at a video store (Rogers Video) for 13 years. Let's just say, it was.....an interesting experience. ;)

Anonymous

I live in Southern Ontario and there's a Family Video in my city. It's a city of about 220,000 so it baffles me as well that we still have one because our internet is fine. They're not just relegated to the boondocks, amazingly.

Zack E

I love hearing about Family Video! There are a ton here in Indiana. There’s a fairly good chance that if you live in Indiana, you’re within at most 15-20 miles from a store. It’s not just in the rural areas either. Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, both pretty urban/suburban areas, each have multiple stores. We usually rent from Redbox kiosks at the grocery store or get Amazon Video digital rentals, but every once in awhile we will stop by just to get that nostalgic video store experience!

Zack E
>>13958681

That was a good one, he nailed the delivery of that!

Joe McPartlin

Great show. I can confirm that 112 Video is no longer open.

Jeremy Cochran

AWESOME episode....so nostalgic for me! Thanks for reading my question, means a lot!!

Brandon Hardman

When I was in 5th Grade I rented Dragon Ball GT Final Bout for the PS1 for weeks from BlockBuster. They only had 1 copy and it was always checked out, and when I finally got my hands on it I kept it checked out forever. It was the best shitty game I ever played. I didn’t know any of the moves and would just button mash, I got blisters on my thumbs from trying to sling kamehamehas.

Anonymous

I love this! I worked at a Video Store in high school. It was the video store where I remember being 5 years old and running to the video game section and being in awe of all the snes box art. Grabbing whatever box looked the coolest. Super Castlevania 4, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare. Or walking down the horror aisle and scaring myself to death just looking at the boxes. And the coolest thing: that video store is still there today. (There was a time when there were four video stores in my hometown of less than 8,000 people!) I live in Chicago now, but whenever I visit my hometown, I go in and walk the aisles. Same carpet, same lighting. And walking into the gaming section still gives me the thrill it did when I was a kid.

Alex Ball

Man there was nothing better as a kid than a Friday night where your parents just picked up a couple a movies, some pizza, maybe some Häagen Dazs and just started your weekend off right. Little pleasures that kids today won’t ever get because everything is now about immediate gratification. We still have a few local video stores here around Dayton, OH called Family Video, but with all the streaming services available and even Red Box, I don’t think it’s long for this world.

Anonymous

I’m from Indiana and hearing you mention Family Video made me smile. They’re always within walking distance from where I live and I’ve rarely gone to them in the last few years, but recently my fiancé and I have been walking around in there in a sort of nostalgic way and we are thinking about becoming customers again. There are actually pretty cool things about the one down the street from me. For one, in the era of data caps, which I’ve gone over four times already this year, you can rent 4K blu-rays for like $4, substantially cheaper than the typical 1080p rental on Amazon. As a resolution/screen fanatic, this perk is really nice. They also have massive sales on these movies a couple months after they release, and you can pick up 4K movies for like $7-10. There’s also this really neat experience of having a pizza place attached to the building, and there’s even a little window inside the Family Video that connects the pizza place and the video store. You can go into Family Video, ring a bell, and someone comes to the window and takes your order, then you walk around and pick your movies, rent them, then walk back to the window to collect your pizza and leave.

Tyler

The video store...so many memories. I remember when my brother and I would try to rent a video game but were unsuccessful because our parents said no. We would take the plastic box that was behind the actual display that lets you know it is available to rent and move it behind a shitty game so no one would rent it. We would constantly take Resident Evil 2 and hide it behind crappy games like Mortal Kombat Mythologies so when we came back it’d be available to rent.

Anonymous
>>13979402

I hear that Justin. I am from Central Illinois, and there is a Family Video just a block from where I live. We don't go a ton, but my wife and I like going once in a while just for that feeling of being in a video store.

Pedro Escobar

working at a blockbuster circa 2010 (when the brand was basically a shell of how i knew them as a youth), puts this in such perspective. its how i built my love for gaming and film, and how i knew i wanted to work in those industries. also, getting paid $10/hr to sit around and shoot the shit about movies isnt a bad way to spend your evenings after high school lol

Anonymous

If I had any drawing ability whatsoever, I would draw a comic of Dagan burying that VHS. That really is a great story.

Kenny Gutzler

I'm sure you have seen this by now, but in the event you did not - at a Toys R Us store, someone found a very dusty copy of Mario Kart 64 "brand new". Probably the coolest rare find I saw.

Joe McPartlin
>>13972380

I remember reading that there were only around 10,000 US versions of that game produced. Terrible game but you were lucky to have it.

Kevin Sullivan

As of this month there is one Blockbuster left, and it is in Bend, Oregon. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inside-last-blockbuster-video-store-america-n892246" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inside-last-blockbuster-video-store-america-n892246</a>

Kevin Sullivan

I’m a bit younger than you guys (born 1988), but my first memories of the original Star Wars trilogy are watching them as my Dad had recorded them on VHS from TV, commercials and all. Far from the most pure experience, I suppose. Maybe even sacrilege. Even when I watch the trilogy today I still see certain scene transitions and think “there should be a commercial break right here.”

LastStandMedia
>>13976430

It really is a lost series of memories, right? Very specific to the '80s and '90s, and that's it.

Marcus Brown

I'll never forget being a child and going to blockbuster with my mom every weekend. Seeing all the movie posters, and collectibles, the endless isles of movies, and getting to only rent one lol. It was Hollywood to me and I'll never forget it. Also to always rewind before returning haha.

Matthew Perry

Just finished listening to this and wanted to thank dagan of reminding of the film " the stuff" I remember watching that film as a little kid and it disturbing me alot !! Just watched the trailer for it , so funny now !! Another great episode , I'm really enjoying these knockbacks :-)

BettyAnn Moriarty

This was terrific. Thank you! Such great memories. I would like to say: I didn’t buy you goodies in the video store. I know. 😐 But i tried to compensate making buttered popcorn from our electric popcorn maker and I remember many days having a den full of neighborhood kids gathered around the TV to watch the newest Moriarty video pick (Parent Trap!) over and over again. 💞; we did have a rewinder in order to ‘save the mechanism within the player’AND ‘to be kind’😉; I’m so glad that I didn’t know about ‘jiggle mode’ 🙄; and that VHS tape buried in the yard 😳 is very close to the pet cemetery that we had there - Destro, Ichabod, Wellington, Sir Lancelot,.... Oh God - what an archeological find for some poor soul. 😳😉 I loved this. Nicely done, my boys👏🏻. I love you guys! ❤️❤️

Chris B

Great episode. There was nothing quite like the video store. Especially the blockbuster championships. Won myself a years worth of free rentals.

Joey Finelli

The video store... Where i rented my first PS1 with resident evil.

LastStandMedia
>>14001865

Thank you! We're having a blast with the series, and are so pleased others are enjoying it, too.

MeatSpin11

Appreciate you guys sharing my comment! This has been my favorite episode so far, Dagan’s late fee story had me dying. I was also surprised when I went back to Nebraska this summer to see Family Video still doing so well. They are definitely still popular in the mid-West and they moved into the Hollywood Video I went to as a kid a few months after they shut down.

BettyAnn Moriarty
>>14012921

Yikes! Digging up the old yard. I’m seeing it in my minds eye. 😳🙄😂 love you bud! So much! ❤️😘

Joey Finelli

Just finished this episode. There are 3 family video stores in my area (Akron, Ohio). This are always busy and they attach a pizza store with them as well. People love it man!

Nick DeBoer

This was an extra fun episode! Haven’t thought about the not 1 but 3 Movies To Go stores in my hometown when I was young in a LONG time. Dagan’s comments about the the covers was spot on. I was always drawn to the SciFi thrillers. LifeForce was one I still remember seeing at the store. Saw the movie later in life... terrible though it did make a great how did this get made episode! I can’t remember the name of the store we rented an N64 from the first time and played Mario 64 for probably 40 hours or more that first weekend. Great topic!

Anonymous

Absolutely loved this episode. So many fond memories of my local blockbuster. I was born in 1990 and actively rented from my local Blockbuster until 2011 when it closed. I tried to rent that adult “pirates” movie at least 3 times when I was under 18 and they never let me walk out with it lol. Also whenever me or my friends would have a game we traditionally purchased break on us, we would go to blockbuster and rent the exact same copy of the game and write blockbuster on our broken copy and switch the disks because there was no serial number on them or anything. Then we would take them back and say this game doesn’t work lol

Mike Tse

My memories of video game stores growing up in Brighton Beach Brooklyn were a combo of arcades; Nintendo games and of course movies. We have 4 video rental stores. They almost always had a pinhead hell raiser poster; commando; Rambo or rocky sign up. The horror section was filled with B movies like toxic avenger or bad hack and slash gore movies.

Mike Tse

Check this <a href="http://www.patreon.com/posts/20069283">http://www.patreon.com/posts/20069283</a>

Nate McKinney

Man, this episode brought back SOOO many memories. I was born in '86, so I grew up in the heart of the video store era. It was one of the highlights of most weekends growing up. Mom would rent a movie or two, I would get a game. I remember renting Boogerman, Xmen 2 and Zombies Ate My Neighbors A TON! I also actually have a Family Video where I live. Right down the street from my house. (Ironically it used to be a Blockbuster.) Has the saloon doors at the adult section and everything. It's a blast from the past any time I go in that place! Great topic, guys!!

LastStandMedia
>>14418357

This episode really struck a chord with folks. I'm so glad. I'll keep that in mind for future topics. =)

MeatSpin11

This is the GOAT episode of Knockback, love coming back to it.