Hey, maybe go preorder that snazzy Wil Wheaton plushie if’n you’d like to get one before Xmas.
Blockbuster Video is a Dallas-based entity (I’m not sure that “business” is the right word), so if you are going to see one in operation, you are probably going to see it here. There is actually one not too far from my house. Every time I drive past it, I get this screwed up look on my face that puzzles and posits, “How? Why? And more importantly, WHO!?” Who is perpetuating this video rental life support with their patronage? I mean, we could go on and on debating “quality of life” and what is or is not a “vegetative state,” but surely we as a society must have enough collective mercy to pull the plug.
Considering I haven’t stepped foot in a Blockbuster for nearly a decade, I can only assume that they are but gutted out husks used for staging some sort of Mad Maxian societal apocalypse scenario. Maybe each Blockbuster is seeded with a few employees, a handful of customers and their children and once the doors are locked government officials watch on closed circuit cameras and time how long it takes for everything to go all Lord Of The Flies. My guess is it’s just after the 4th time the in-store tv’s play the trailers for Miss Congeniality.
I was inspired to make this comic upon remembering a photo that I had seen online of a “Blockbuster wasteland.” A little research showed that it was posted on Tumblr by none other than my friend Wil. Once I realized that, I changed the alt text, which had previously said: I was 30, going on 31 the first time I saw a dead former retail giant. Spooky.
COMMENTERS: When was the last time you remember regularly using a Blockbuster? Do you STILL?! What happened to you? Are you OK? Remember walking all around a store for sometimes an hour only to go home empty handed? That is how people used to live ! Any other particular stores or services that you used to use every day that have since been totally replaced by technology?
Feel free to add to the mythos of “what goes on inside a Blockbuster.”
I was never really a Blockbuster fan. I always preferred Hollywood Video. They were less conservative and had better game selections. Mostly I just remember spending a couple years where it was my goal in life to see every horror movie they carried in their horror section. Succeeded at my nearest store then moved on to another video store desperately hunting down something new to feed the really bad, cheesy horror flick addiction I had.
🙂
Ok, maybe not quite that bad. I do recall making a beeline for the horror section every time and spending an hour trying to find something I hadn't seen yet.
Yeah, Hollywood Video used to be a pretty awesome competitor to Blockbuster…those weerrrre theaaaa daaaaays…..
I did the "Horror" thing, too, at my BB store.
That's how I found the gems what are the Evil Dead (how did I miss this, before?).
Sadly, my local BB closed a few weeks ago before I could manage through the "Resurrector" series… 🙁
I like to think that the bitter film school grad every Blockbuster had is kept around as a jester.
"Explain to me why we should not watch Big Momma's House 2 again, fool! King Joffrey of the X-Box Throne demands it!"
"Because….*sob* b-because there's a stack of Godard films right over there sire…your Newreleasesguard are using them to test their swords…"
"SILENCE! Your words no longer please me! Have him flogged with Nerds Ropes and bring me the caperings of Martin Lawrence!"
"AT LEAST GIVE ME THE CRITERION EDITION OF LE MEPRIS!"
The last time I was in my local Blockbuster was ought 08. I rented a video game. I remember that they were at the time, offering Giant Rat rides to children four and under.
I can still hear the screams…
I'm up in Plano (howdy). We were using Blockbuster constantly as recently as 2008 – we had a netflix-style membership for the physical store, where we could have up to two movies out at any one time, for as long as we wanted. It was actually pretty nice, because it was so close and we didn't have to wait for them to mail us what we wanted, but economy downturn lost job blahdy money blah blah.
I think we would have gone back on that plan, but then they closed the one that was within walking distance of our house. There were 5 within reasonable driving distance (<15 minutes) until, I think, January of this year, when they all put out Store Closing signs. "Everything on sale! Fixtures for sale!" I let it slide for about 2 weeks, and then stopped into the closest one. Everything was marked down to $3 or less but there was only one thing that interested me. They were pretty well gutted.
With prices like that, I thought I'd make a trip to the other side of town. THAT one was overflowing with stuff I wanted, but they did not have a single movie for sale for less than 12.99, which was supposedly 33% off. In fact, they had individual DVDs from TV season boxed sets for 12.99. (Derrrr…? I can buy the 5-DVD box set for $25 brand new). I took the time to ask an employee when they thought they'd move down to the next percentage place (50%) but they didn't figure it'd be for another couple weeks.
I knew I wouldn't remember to come back.
PS this thing won't let me log in with twitter.
What is this Blockbuster you speak of? Is it some sort of alpha version of Netflix?
In all seriousness i remember walking around these for 10 minutes then moving on to play the games stations until my parents said it was time to go.
Last time I was in an actual Blockbuster, it involved renting a GameCube game…
We used to frequent one that was next door to our favorite Chinese takeout place that was within walking distance of our apartment. The staff sucked and honestly so did their selection but we'd had such a horrible experience with Hollywood Video's staff that I vowed never to return. Blockbuster also had better candy. To this day, that was the only place that I could find Pop Rocks chocolate bars and they had my favorite brand of gummie bears. After we moved we discovered that all the stores had or were closing down in our new town and we are left with nothing but the little kiosks in the grocery stores that never actually have the movies we want in stock.
Blockbuster went bust in Australia, but there are still similar franchises around the place. My dad still rents from his local videostore because it's easier to find DVDs with subtitles than download the subs for digital versions, but the fact that he's hearing impaired and his local store does $1 weekly rental every Tuesday is a definite factor.
I had some younger friends over and realised they hadn't seen some of the classics of the early 90s that I grew up on. Apparently those titles weren't new enough for the video store to still have them on their shelves, so I've never been back.
As far as I know, not true. There are three Blockbuster stores still open in my hometown in Australia, none of which seem to be in closing mode. I think they survive mostly by selling DVDs rather than renting them. The company is going downhill as there are much better places to buy DVDs, but they still exist.
Oh hey, you're 100% right! Must have just been my local Blockbuster going BlockBust. They licensed the name from the American version, but they're not affiliated in any way.
We didn't have a Blockbuster here but we did have a Movie Gallery. People who had a Movie Gallery famously know what happened there (Hint: They went out of business.). And by that point the last time I've been to a rental store was the year before because I had a free rental. So it's only been three years since I stepped in one of those places. There's still apparently a Blockbuster about 50 miles away but I never bother even looking at the place as I go by it when I'm around there.
We had a Movie Gallery in town here and I actually quite liked them. They had reasonable rates and rented even new movies for a week. And aside from anything else, if you hadn't come in in a few months, they'dcall up and give you a free rental.
They closed, though, and the new store that replaced them (an independent, I think) was *awful*. My husband and I decided to check them out, since they had a big sign in the window that said you could rent movies for a week for like $1.99 each or what. So we grabbed a stack of seven movies and then Hubby herded the over-excited kids to the car while I went to pay.
Guess what? As a new customer we could only rent 3 at a time for the first month, in case we stole them (despite, you know, them having our address off my driver's license and knowing where we live). Also that $1.99 was only for the old movies, not new releases. So I weeded out most of the movies, paid the $15 I was expecting to pay for seven movies for a week for three movies that had to be back the next day, told them that if I was going to steal their movies that I could easily wait a month to do so, went home, watched the movies, and came back next day and cancelled my account and told them precisely why.
About six months later, now, and they've gone out of business. I can't IMAGINE why. /sarcasm
That pic of Wil's looks like someplace the SCP Foundation would house a Safe object – nobody would ever look inside it, after all, and the sort of person who might wouldn't be surprised by anything they might see…
I worked at blockbuster for years. Closed one down a few years ago, before they all started closing. They'll all be gone once their leases are out. Interesting fact, blockbuster had a chance to buy out Netflix in the beginning, but the president didn't see it taking off… Oops.
Blockbuster lost the chance to buy Hollywood Video to Movie Gallery, had they won they would have been out of business years ago.
I dunno, I don't think Blockbuster would have had to borrow money (and then not pay any of it back) like Movie Gallery did.
Verily, I recall fondly the days of yore when I would frequent ye olde Blockbusters to peruse their vast archives of visualogical records. 'Twas a simpler time, when the great spider of cyberspace was still in its infancy, before it entangled the world within its web and brought voyeuristic merriment within our fingertips. But those memories are but a shadow now and will soon fade from the annals of time, carried to Lethe by the rhythmic shuffle of the Macarena and dragged to its depth by the restless wraiths of our neglected Tamagotchis.
You should leave the bath salts in the 21st century, verily I say.
I can't help but think that the employees have somehow mutated into a race of bestial half-men who worship a copy of "2001: a Space Odyssey". The government would be based upon the contents of the movie "Clerks", Randall being viewed as the founder of their wretched kingdom. They would also drink liquor made from fermented skittles dissolved in mountain dew.
You've convinced me to enter such an establishment and partake on their rainbow alcohol!
Don't do it. It has been proven poisonous to humans. Only they who stalk the horror section can partake of it without suffering from some diabetic fit.
The knock-off brand of SkittleBrau, SkittleDu (with an umlat because it's hip).
I worked at one till last year. I took a month off for finals and projects and Dish Network, (who now owns Blockbuster, primarily for the name,) decided that I had to reapply for my job. Considering the only rasies I got from them for 4 of my seven years there were because minimum wage went up, I used to make $2 over minimum when I was hired, and I had a new job at the library doing a fifth of my job at blockbuster for better pay, yeah, I didn't bother going back.
If you do by mail and don't stream, their by mail also has games in it for a similar price to Netflix. I also got Gears of War 3 for $25 less used there than at Gamestop.
There are a few still open, but they are dying off. Kinda sucks, but if they kept the actual people who weren't absolute bitches as management, they might have lasted longer. I had…9 mangers in 7 years, one of which I genuinely liked. She quit in 8 months because a job selling cell phones at a kiosk paid better and was less bullshit. Aside from the Sadism, I'd have rather worked for Joffery than my last boss there.
My local Blockbuster (Oakleigh, Melbourne, Australia) only closed down about two months ago. I was actually a regular customer of them, going in at least once every fortnight. You see, they were the only place to buy Ben and Jerry's Icecream that I knew of without making a fairly sizable trek. I was on a first name basis with the manager, who asked me once, a few weeks before they closed, what I thought he should do to make more people come in to rent movies and games.
I asked him if he thought there was anything that could be done. He kind of smiled sadly, and said "Yeah. Yeah. Point."
I was a but bummed out when they closed, because it's really hard to find Ben and Jerry's here. At least, I thought it was. Turns out, I was just wrong, and blinded by convenience (the Blockbuster was on my walk home from the train station). It only took me around seventeen seconds on Google to find a local place that sells it. And with that, every single possible thing that Blockbuster could have offered me was replaced by the internet.
They’re still operating in Brazil, at least as sections within a large retail chain. Internet access being what it is (the max available in my neighborhood may have recently jumped to 8mbps from 2mbps, to be confirmed), we still frequent independent video stores. The larger one is closing soon due to competition not from online streaming but from pirated DVDs.
I used to work for Blockbuster. Those in-store video loops drove me insane. They made me hate Drew Carey for a very long time. It was an undeserved hatred, but that's what happens when you hear the same thing over and over and over day after day after day after day.
Now that I think about it, I can't think of a video rental store anywhere near me. The one I used to work at (actually in another city) is now split in two, half being a dentist office and the other half a mobile phone store. The one around the block from where I live now closed up almost two years ago and is now an auto parts store. The only place I know of to rent physical movies is from the Red Box outside the grocery store.
When I was 17 I worked at an electronics,jewelry and housewares store called Service Merchandise. They basically invented the "buy a $10 replacement warranty for a $9 phone" thing that pretty much every other big box retail place started doing in the late 90's. Except that with us you pretty much got yelled at all the time if you didn't CONSTANTLY INSIST that people buy the shitty plan. Anyway, we had an audio/video loop playing back in electronics (Where i was) that was on LASERFUCKINGDISC and looped every 45 min or so. It had "Band On The Run" and "Betty David Eyes," two songs that I can't even consider hearing now without going into convulsions. Oddly enough, just thinking about those songs reminds me of what that place smelled like.
I have a blockbuster right across the street but because I work nights it’s been a while since my buddy and I have gone in there. I’m still assuming it’s still open. I think the only reason it’s still open is because a little pizza shop opened up next to it. I might be tempted to go there next Fri, might even find something to watch on dvd
I just took this picture out of my window, on the outskirts of London. I've never been inside, so there may be pumas I don't know about.
<img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/212fzuv.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">
Well, that didn't work, so here's a link: http://i45.tinypic.com/212fzuv.jpg
Secret meth lab.
Back in the day I had a guilty relationship with blockbuster. The non-chain store was closer, but Blockbuster had two things – a copy of Hunchback Hairball, and also a wall of DS( videos with four – yes, FOUR – epsodes on each tape. So my friend and I would go there first, and then invariably knew that if the film we also wanted was not in the local shop on the way back, we were stuffed. And so we started the slippery slope of getting videos exclusively from blockbuster because of their damn multiple copies of new films, and the non-chain store eventually folded 🙁
Of course, the last time I was in blockbuster a few years ago, you could get multiple films for only the promise that you would tell someone you had used them. Not sure if that store has closed down, I believe the one in my current town is still (just) hanging on.
I worked for that dying beast up until a year ago when i was finally able to jump ship to a company that actually rewards hard work and effort with regular bonuses and raises. The absolute worst thing about it, towards the end times, the corporate overlords attempted to institute worship of the almighty pickle in the pouch.
We used to go to Blockbuster every Friday night for 3 videos, back when I was a kid. Lasted until my early teens. I think the last time I went into a Blockbuster was probably around 2003. But I visited Hollywood video once or twice a year until maybe 2008/9? I still get DVDs out from my library.
I was pretty bummed out when the nearby Blockbuster closed last year. At the time we didn’t have Netflix in the UK, and you could get 5 films for a week for just £5 (although it was never anything newer than a year). That was a pretty good deal, and I used to pick up stuff just because it was interesting.
I might be moving nearer the one on the other side of town, and if I do I can see myself going there. Netflix over here is still pretty limited, and it’s nice to be able to go rent weird stuff.
I actually went into my local Blockbuster last night, and go in fairly regularly. I get tv series dvd box sets for ridiculously cheap sums! I go in every few weeks and pick up another series to watch. I also use it as a way to catch any movies I missed at the cinema – there aren't that many so it isn't worth bothering with a Love Film or Netflix account, but this way I can pick up films when I want to.
Last night there was an overgrown man-child behing the counter, but no pumas or thunderdrome style death fights (they may have been out back though, I didn't check).
I actually worked as a shift lead at a Blockbuster, and I know one particular night, obviously unbeknownst to our manager, we have a party complete with a lot of booze and playing videos from our "music" section. Somewhere out there is a youtube video of me goth dancing with racks of videos for sale behind me.
I left that job in 2003 and haven't been inside of one since.
Getting to rent videos for free and before the release date was awesome though. The only perk that made that job worth it.
Oh, and we ALWAYS played video games after the store closed. While I was counting the drawers, employees (after clocking out of course) played X-Box on the tv's until I was done.
Can't do that on one of Blockbuster's gas station kiosk now, can ya?
Last time was 2005, before I moved to my current city. There's several local video stores (Vulcan Video) that are WAAAAY better then Blockbuster (better prices, better selection and knowledgeable staff), and thus have dominated the remaining movie market here. Pretty much all the Blockbusters/Hollywood videos have closed here.
Generally I only rent if I A) Want to watch something very specific that isn't on Netflix or B) Bringing a specific movie to a friends house who doesn't have very good internet or Netflix.
Last time I used a Bockbster was Thursday. I have the 15$ rental plan, so its no more expensive than Netflix, and I live within walking distance, so there's plenty of convienince.
Wow, I forgot the hour long ramble of disappointment because you got there after all the new releases had been snagged for the weekend. After our children were out of strollers, I never went back. Our local library has an extensive collection of movies and TV, allowed me to select from the computer, run in to the desk and grab them without the stress of trying to watch my kids and select something I actually wanted to see. Did I mention the library let me keep them for a full week and was free? The only stores I physically go to now are the grocery store (but that's just to drive up and collect the order I made on line) and shoe stores. Everything else I need is available somewhere on line. Amazon has made almost every store obsolete.
"Our local library has an extensive collection of movies and TV"
My daughter is 5 and the only place she has ever rented movies was from our library.
I'm hearing impaired. Is it true that Netflix's streams don't provide captioning? If so I may rethink signing up with them.
Some of them do, some of them don't – there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it.
I'm deaf as well, and this is your friend. http://www.phlixie.com/netflix/
They update fairly frequently with subtitled titles.
Actually, since making that comment I've received a cochlear implant and can probably get by without captions! But thank you muchly for this link. I'll be sure to pass this on to others.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Oh gosh, I used to work for Blockbuster almost two years ago. I think the company could have stood a chance if it had better people running it. As it stood then, the people in charge had the following business strategy: cook the same recipe the same way over and over again, and maybe it will taste differently. It's that lack of the ability to innovate upon itself that prevented it from ever managing to pick things back up. That, and we employees were treated like garbage, particularly the manager of my store. He devoted so much of himself to making that store a decent place and all he ever got from his bosses was "you're not trying hard enough." I can tell you from experience that the people who worked above the managers were complete dicks and were always unwilling to listen to new ideas.
As an aside, I'm really glad Blockbuster passed on the idea to buy Netflix. They would have fucked it up badly and such a great concept – while inevitable – would have taken longer to gain footing.
Rarely went to Blockbuster because it was expensive, and their selections of indie and international films sucked. Blockbuster Canada went belly up back in 2011, I had a $5 gift card which I had tried to use months earlier…to buy a used movie but the selection was bad and the staff were d*cks so I never made it back.
We used to have a great video store in walking distance called Video Update, they had a Tuesday deal 7 video tapes for $7 for 7 days. Then they got bought by Movie Gallery, who changed the deal to $2 for a video tape for 2 day rental. That stopped all the parents from renting piles of movies for their kids.
Then one day they got rid of all the video tapes (put them in a sale bin at ridiculous prices)…the shelves were bare with dvd's face forward on the racks and 8" spaces in between each DVD. Suddenly all the movies I was planning to rent were gone, and there wasn't much to choose from. We stopped going, they closed within about a year. Except for a small selection of videos at the Mom&Pop convenience stores, there is only a few small video stores I can think of.
Remember when people would pay lifetime membership fees to video stores? When you had to provide a credit card so that they could take a $60 deposit per movie if needed?
I remember those lifetime memberships! My dad had one he spent a small fortune on and was devastated when the place went out of business. And all they offered where Abbott and Costello and other black and white movies.
Weren't those "Lifetime" memberships about $80-$200? The stores didn't have a lot of selection because movies were so expensive to buy. I remember one store had the giant picture laser discs (12"), I only knew one person who had a laser disc machine.
Hell, I remember when you had to make sure you were getting the right format tapes (and not come home with VHS tapes when you meant to get Betas, or vice versa), and you pretty much *had* to rent a machine too because hardly anyone actually owned one.
Wow. That's something to consider, isn't it? I have lived long enough to not only see the birth of an entirely new industry; I've lived to see it's death, too, and I'm barely middle-aged. And I was almost a teenager when it started.
Huh.
Yes I know what you mean, when I look at my cassette tape collection (mix tapes – yeah!)….and I still love my 5 cd changer and rarely use an MP3 player or Ipod.
My parents would rent a video machine for the weekend, and we'd rent a ton of movies and watch until we fell asleep. They would pick movies like Francis, and The Deerhunter (a good movie but really hard to sit through when you're 12) and I would pick Zombie Flesh Eaters.
First machine they bought was a Betamax, I had these fantastic Laurel and Harvey short movies taped on Betamax because the CBC used to show them on Sunday afternoons….once the Beta broke I could no longer play them and never have been able to find their short films on VHS/DVD.
So they built a new Blockbuster here about 2 years ago, as far as i can tell it's still a blockbuster. When it opened I went inside to see if it was any different than I remembered. Time stands still inside, expiration dates on the candy means nothing, as the inside is in a state of temporal flux. Inside it is 2005, but it is also 1998, and 1981, and 2012, and 2030.
Last time I was in a Blockbuster was Dec 31st 2010. We'd just moved house so I transferred my ownership and got some special deal for 3 movies over New Year. They closed down 3 months later (although there is still a big one open fairly near us)
There is a Blockbuster about 20min from where I live that I use quite regularly. There's nothing like being able to complain about a scratched disk to a REAL person. I went there last Saturday and rented Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers on Blu-Ray.
We hold our Blockbuster Club Card meetings on Wednesday evenings, where we remove the lungs of a casual employee for The President's Man to behold. So far, His wisdom has included shunning scarves and stocking more Pepsi in the drinks fridge.
"There's nothing like being able to complain about a scratched disk to a REAL person."
Yeah, but Ive gotten a disc from Netflix that was completely broken in half before and they had a new one in my mailbox with no questions in less than 48 hours. Not bad.
"There's nothing like being able to complain about a scratched disk to a REAL person."
Only to have them do absolutely NOTHING about!
The disk rented at one point was scratched to fuck. The replacement the kid handed me was even worse shape! So I got to spend 4 bucks, waste 2 days and still not see a colorful Pixar movie
I was in a Blockbuster [central FL] just last night. I rent there occasionally because I see no need to pay for Netflix [atleast not quite yet] when anyone I know who gets the DVDs sent to them usually ends up with crappy/scratched ones and I can go into Blockbuster and get a new release, that I can check the look of the DVD before I leave, every other week or so and pay $6 a month. Plus I am sadly not one of those people with a Blue-ray that can stream Netflix to avoid the scratched DVD issue. Lastly, my friends who do have that set up always seem to have issues with the stream. So, I go to Blockbuster every other week or so,…rent a new release and maybe buy the 4 for $20 movies,….and am ok with it for now,….lol
A couple of my friends were working for a Blockbuster here… they both just quit at the same time 😛
I haven't seen a video store in a long time that wasn't dark, dank and half filled with cheap ex-rental DVDs begging for our purchase to let them escape.
I worked for a small family owned video store in Dallas. Don't know if it's still there…Premiere Video. This was in the mid 90s and we were known for avant garde movies like the French movie "White" and "Amelie"…shit like that.
One time Eric Stoltz came in and bought 8 VHS video tapes. Never really went to blockbuster. But those of you in Dallas know about good old Sound Warehouse. The blockbuster of music.
My last Blockbuster visit was going in … I dun even remember for what movie, and their system for some reason decided that The Orange Box for Xbox that I've rented and returned something like 3 months ago was actually mine to keep. Then the girl went to find the game disk and gave it to me
… and that was like … 5 years ago
The last time I actually used Blockbuster was about six years ago. I felt dirty – especially given that I had a Netflix account at the time, but we had to watch the rest of whatever TV show we were powering through on disc, and couldn't wait the extra two days.
Honestly, I was surprised to hear they still existed anywhere. A sad, once mighty kingdom, lost to technology along with mixtapes.
Penny Arcade did a comic very similar to this one a while back (at least similar in sentiment).
I still use Blockbuster. Why? Because when you rent like one movie per year, it makes zero sense to pay for a Netflix sub. Additionally, I do not have an HD TV and hooking a computer up to my TV is ok but usually not worth the effort.
Yes, I live in the stone age but I don't watch many movies so when I do, Blockbuster is more economical.
I used to have a Blockbuster within walking distance of my house. Their child-king's throne was on a carpet that they somehow fused to the floor, and none of the other businesses that have moved in have been willing to move it for fear of what lies below. The goat-blood stains outlining his former seat and tormented screams that have been coming from beneath for far longer than any mortal being could have lived probably have something to do with that. Either that or they don't want to spend however much it would cost them to have somebody tear up their floor. All I know is that after about a month the madness sets in and their employees vanish, never to be seen again, forcing the store to close.
In 2000, I was running a political campaign in rural south central Florida, living in a town where the average age was over 50. The local Blockbuster had a huge section of Classics, so I rented movies from them all summer and watched them late in the evenings when I could devote at least partial attention to them. I saw most of the great films of the golden age that summer; it was the last time I entered a Blockbuster. I used to flrt with the checkout girl, the only person in the entire district with a tattoo; she was a "film student," although there was no college with a film school for 150 miles in any direction. But it was a Blockbuster and they had to employ at least one film student.
I also owned my first cell phone during that campaign. It was the size of two packets of Lance crackers and weighed a pound and a half. My carrier was BellSouth.
Late in the year I had to replace my crumbling desktop computer with a shiny new laptop. It did not have a wide-format screen, and overheated so badly I couldn't actually rest it on my lap or I'd singe off my leg hair and scorch my pants. It came with a massive carrying case that included a special padded compartment for peripherals or something, which turned out to be the exact right size to conceal a fifth of Jack Daniels (the most important possible peripheral when you work in politics). I bought it at Circuit City.
I stopped renting movies when "exchange" type stores started popping up and I could buy my own used copy of a movie for a dollar more than renting someone else's used copy. Before that though for me it was always mom and pop stores I rented at. You didn't usually find oddball horror or weird stuff at Blockbuster. Most of the ones in Cleveland are closed now, but as recently as 2011 I was still doing IT for them through a sub contracting company.
I haven't set foot in a Blockbuster Video store in my hometown in over a decade, when my family got Digital Cable in the summer of 2000. The last time I set foot in one of their stores EVER was in the spring of 2010, near my grandparent's house, and it was having a going out of business sale. My family made off like bandits!
The video store, oddly, is not dead yet. Family Video is still going strong and is now pretty much the last survivor of the chain video store concept due to extreme low costs and what looks like a tendency to focus on areas where streaming video hasn't made much of an impact. There are still the Mom-n-Pop local brick and mortar stores as well. Speaking as someone who spent most of his high school career working in one–what, did you think the name was just for irony?–it leaves me a bit sad and wistful that the next generation may never see a video store. But without the video store guy to ask about the movies coming out–and the direct to video market doesn't show much in the way of signs of slowing down–at least there are still the bloggers.
I had sex in a Blockbuster, She was a few years older then me and was married, but she totally came on to me. We fucked in the family section after closing. Good times.
I had to share that one because odds are it will the last time getting to tell it without explaining what a Blockbuster was,
I live in central Oklahoma, our local Blockbuster shut it's doors only two months ago. Being the Video Department Manager at the local Hastings ( another entertainment store based out of Texas) it has boosted my sales big time.
There’s a Blockbuster in my town (UK), still buy ex-rental DVDs from it.
Worked at the BBV for 5 years. Oddly enough the people I worked with are still some of my best friends. We we're quite film snobby for chain employees. I guess it was all we had.
The last time I was in a Blockbuster was maybe 2008 or 2009. They were going out of business here in town, including one that was brand new and opened three months prior. Everything was $5, so I got about 20 Xbox 360 and PS2 games, and a couple DVDs. Xbox Live membership cards were included, so they kept me going for a few years.
There was one very close to my current house that is now a 'medical institute' (ie. undercover meth lab). We have a rental place called Hasting's here, and I always rented there instead. I used Blockbuster maybe twice when I didn't feel like driving the extra two miles to Hasting's. Now, even most of the Hasting's in town are gone (including one that was just built a year ago).