Alaska Is Home to Over 50% of America’s Last Remaining Blockbuster Video Stores

there's a video rental store near me that I joined. I absolutely love it. just like you said, the instant access is great, but there's something about wandering through genres and new releases and the tacit feeling of holding something in your hands that makes the stores so much better.

 

Blockbuster is super nostalgic for me. My mom would bring my brother and I there almost every Friday or Saturday night to pick out a movie.

Every now and then she'd splurge and let us rent a Nintendo 64 game.

So many memories. I didn't even realize some still existed. It's pretty crazy, but for Alaska, makes a ton of sense.

 

I truly miss those days. It was often times more enjoyable walking around the store deciding what to get than actually watching the terrible movie we picked out. Its nice these days to watch anything anytime you want but I wouldnt mind browsing around a blockbuster.

 

One of my favorite Twitter accounts: @loneblockbuster

 

haha these tweets are hilarious

 

I haven’t watched this yet, but I’d imagine many of these remaining rental stores have adopted a monthly subscription program alongside their standard old-school rental service that looks similar to Netflix DVD in terms of renting/returning without due dates and exchanging money on each visit. I spent time in Oregon earlier this year and went to a Blockbuster for the first time in at least 10 years. I rented an older movie for 99 cents and I felt like I was in a different era.

 

When I first moved out after college there was a Hollywood video near me that I think for $4.99 a month you could rent any movie in their collection that wasn't a "new" release and got a buck off all new releases. You could rent up to like 5 at a time, and as often as you wanted. I'd go multiple times a week. Pick up shitty fast food and 5 movies.

I watched so many movies during that year all by myself out of school working on the website and with nothing else to do. No friends really around. I'd rent seasons of TV and burn them and re-watch them over and over again. (Scrubs!)

 

When I was 13, my best friend, Sean Chan and I hit the Blockbuster after school on a Friday (as usual) and found a movie called Breast Men. It featured David Schwimmer, seemed to contain a lot of nudity, and was definitely a Restricted (17+ rating). So we thought we would try our luck and rent it. We were so nervous going up to the counter thinking there's no way the guy would rent it to us. But he did (the dude being only about 3 years older than us).

So then we take it back to my house, thinking of what we'll say to my mom if she asks "Breast Men? What kind of movie is that?!" So we walk in the back door of my house, which opens right into the kitchen, and my mom is right there and sees us with our dirty 17+ film. We looked guilty af. But the silver lining was she was on the phone and seemingly long distance 'cause she was pacing the kitchen. She whispered to us, while still on the phone, "what movie is that?" We showed her the spine and she read the title. She furrowed her brow and said "Don't watch that until I look at it first."

Sean Chan and I run into our home study, and with a surprising about of cunning deviousness for a couple of dumb 13 year olds...we open Microsoft Word '97 on the computer. And he quickly reads to me the description of the movie on the back of the Blockbuster paper sleeve. While he reads "17+ for nudity, sexuality and some adult themes" I type on Microsoft Word "PG-13 for course language and violence." We copy the movie summary, year, and duration verbatim and we quickly print this out, cut out our new description of the movie and slide it under the plastic sleeve on top of the real 17+ one, just in time for my mom to walk in and say "lemme see that movie." She looks on the back cover and reads:

Breast Men, PG-13 for course language and violence. 96 mins. 1997.

She says, "Hm, okay. Enjoy your movie." Then we proceeded to head to the basement and watch more nudity than we had ever seen in our youthful 13 year old days.

I love Blockbuster.

 

I still go to family video on occasion but blockbuster holds so many memories.

I remember I spent so long finding a game that my mom just grabbed one and made me rent it. I complained but that game ended up being Morrowind. It ended up being my favorite game for years.

Also, when they went out of business near me, I saved up for months to buy all the seasons of Scrubs during their going out of business sale.

 

10/10 story. It's these kinds of fond youthful memories...

 

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss going to Blockbuster to rent (mostly video games) and movies. But I'd also be lying if I said I wasn't endlessly frustrated with them never having what I wanted to rent.

To this day though, there's over a dozen movie covers that when I see, I immediately think of Blockbuster because some just stood out over others. Dead Alive being one, Major League being another.

 

Great comments here. Reading all of the comments I'm feeling all nostalgic and now also missing the release day Tuesdays at Tower Records.

 

I have a love/hate thing for rental stores. I do miss being able to peruse through rows of shelves for movies but at the same time, streaming just makes watching movies so much easier.

 

I still can't adjust to Friday release days for albums!!

 

I used to work at Blockbuster. It wasn't a bad job to get through college. I enjoyed the 5 free rentals a week, and getting movies in advance!

 

I still hit up Family Video once in awhile. Can’t believe they’re still open though.

 

Blockbuster Video. Best job ever.

 

Jason,

I believe you live in the greater Portland area, right?

I'm a big Movie Madness guy but I found a video store on SE 70(ish) and King Road called Great American Video and Espresso that reeeeeally feels like Blockbuster but is also family owned. You can return movies at 7:30AM and get kinda shitty coffee. It's the best.

 

I didn't have a Blockbuster nearby, but there were 3 private rental stores called like M&M Video, Video Cave, and one other. Then when I was like 11 or so, we got Hollywood Video. All of which are gone of course.

 

Yeah, I think that's where my girlfriend's parents have gone a few times with us because they only have a DVD player. Hah. That's cool.

 

I definitely miss browsing the store for movies and video games. I remember renting so many cheesy, horrible horror films from blockbuster as a kid.

 

I'm sure the blockbuster on the island in Alaska that I lived on will be the last to go lol

 

Renting a video meant you were actually going to watch that movie when you got home. Streaming means you scroll through Netflix for a hour and then decide to do something else.

 

That’s fascinating. Didn’t think there were any more at all. It makes total sense now that there would be some up there thinking about the internet situation.

I miss those days of going to rent the newest game, and of course they got 2 copies so they were sold out. I had to settle for something else and would sometimes stumble on a real gem.