Internet Killed the Video Store

There’s a DVD from Netflix sitting on my kitchen table, helping to eradicate video stores and their geeky employees from the United States. The internet has made it appallingly easy to find any title online and get it to your home. I ordered season three of Showtime’s Dexter last Sunday and found it on my table by Tuesday. But I wanted Dexter Sunday. Order it instantly, see it in a few days once the urge has passed. No more going to the store and asking for off-beat movies like Ghost World that you just have to watch on a slow Saturday night; no thrill of the hunt.
Every day of my spring break in La Crosse, Wisconsin was gray, scattered with rain and wetness that made me a couple inches taller from what the humidity did to my hair. My sideswept bangs did not sweep to the side but looked like a broom upside down on my forehead no matter how much time I spent with the straightener. My boyfriend and I are both big movie people, and pride ourselves in being on top of anything out on DVD. We go to the Redbox at least every other day when we get to spend a week or weekend together.
This week, with the weather keeping us mostly indoors, we ran the Redbox dry and went to see two movies in theaters. It wasn’t enough. We needed more. His box set of the Rocky films didn’t cut it either. After Rocky & Rocky 2, I needed a break from the violence. Instead of buying a bottle of wine to pair with the meal we were making that evening, we went to Family Video to find a movie that would pair well with our wine (Prosecco champagne from Italy. $10).
People at video stores are crazy. Mike and I fixated on a red Buick Century from the 90’s as it ripped across the parking lot, marveling at how the woman at the wheel was driving with a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She executed a pull-through without waiting to see what was at the other end. A man in a pickup truck, similarly on a cell phone, was sliding into the other side of the space just as she was. She didn’t stop. She moved forward so that her car was inches from the bumper of the truck. He pulled out.
Mike and I had to watch. We weren’t trying to be sneaky, but turned our heads all the way around to see what was going to happen after both left their cars. Nothing. The woman paused a second in front of the door to put her cigarette out. The man took that opportunity to slide in, and that was that.
Inside, a middle-aged couple was browsing Family Video’s shelves, just as Mike and I were, and as the woman picked up Up in the Air, Mike said to me, “Poor guy.” Some teenage girls got in our way and families with small children tried to avoid the video games section. In the economic climate of La Crosse, Wisconsin in 2010, it seems exciting enough to rent a video and stay in as to pay eight dollars for a night out to see something in the theater.
Anyway, Mike and I couldn’t find anything that interested us, until we happened upon season one of Dexter. I recalled a conversation Mike, his brothers and I had had over dinner at a Mexican restaurant around Christmastime. Serial killers are fascinating. Dexter is a show about a serial killer that Mike’s brother Robb, a well-groomed, successful employee of an insurance company recommended to us. Dexter is a well-groomed, successful blood-spatter analyst with Miami Metro Police Department’s Homicide division. We decided to do it. What better to watch than something recommended by a family member?
Family Video didn’t have the first season. We debated jumping right into the second season, but decided to rely on the luxury of another nearby video store for the disc we wanted. As we pulled into this parking lot, I said to Mike, “This looks like a place that smells weird, doesn’t it?”
When we entered behind a tattooed and pierced woman in her 30s, my premonition was fulfilled. I can’t even say what it smelled like. But nothing inside looked like it had been painted, renovated or even moved since 1984. We zoomed around the store, knowing what we were looking for, passing casual browsers looking for an escape from an otherwise-boring Friday night. The television section was tiny and hidden, but would work for people who go to the place on a regular basis. The whole place was cramped, so it took some looking to find Dexter, but we got him. He was right next to the porn section.
Unlike the big chain stores that either do not carry erotica or have a separate room to house it, Premiere Video of La Crosse did things more simply. While every other title in the store was facing the browser, porn videos were stacked like books, so you could just read the title on the end. A quick flick of my wrist showed me a group of naughty nurses from the 70s just waiting for trouble. How they got from the 70s to DVD is beyond my powers of deduction, but there they were. Within reach of all of La Crosse’s 12-year-old boys. And girls. Who knows.
The two employees made me feel at home there. They had the feel of people comfortable with their jobs, hell, they might have even liked their jobs. The young man who checked Mike and I out at the register looked the part of a video store clerk—big, heavy-plastic, black-framed glasses, pencil arms and white white skin. The girl made me feel alright with wearing a hoodie and the crazy broom of hair on my head. She may have been wearing her polo work shirt right on top of her pajamas. Like teachers, I couldn’t imagine seeing them outside of that place. They just belonged there. We got Mike a card, for which he had to fill out his personal information and submit his driver’s license. As we walked out of the store, he joked that he would probably never go in there again.
It’s not that he hated Premiere Video or that the weird smell turned him off. He only has 2 more months left of living in La Crosse, and Redbox and Netflix are so much easier than going to a video store. They’re cheaper, too.
The next night, after we were back at his family’s house in the Milwaukee area for the weekend, getting the next disc in the Dexter series was our priority for the night. We drove to dinner at a Chinese restaurant separate from his parents— specifically so that we could drive to a Blockbuster afterward. We drove in the opposite direction of his house to find it, seeing only an empty lot of a strip mall lit just enough to show us the blue and yellow paint. That Blockbuster had reached its end.
Discouraged but not hopeless, we drove to the Blockbuster location nearest his family’s home. It was still there, thank God. We went inside—the place was pretty busy. After looking n the TV section, we found 0 Dexter. I went to the clerk to ask about it, and she explained to me, without a hint of sadness or emotion, that the Dexter discs had been sent back to corporate to prepare them for sale. Everything in the store was about to go on sale. The place was closing.
The Mukwonago suburb of Milwaukee is no longer going to have a single video store. The middle-class families that make up the community have to rely on Netflix or the limited selection of Redbox. No one in the area will be employed by video stores. No more dealing with employees when you want a movie. No more experts, no more staff picks on the shelves, no more excitement of the sheer physical variety within your reach. Video store geeks will go the way of record-store geeks—they’ll be portrayed by this generation’s John Cusack in a knockoff of High Fidelity and displayed at the top of Netflix’s website and in bright lights on Redboxes everywhere.