A few years ago, I can remember talking to my former morning show co-host about my weekend and, at one point, she stopped me and asked me to explain the concept of a video store. She had never heard of a video store!
One of my current colleagues just about fell off his chair when he heard me say recently, I had been to the video store to pick up a movie. “Who goes to a video store?” he demanded with a snort of indignation.
I’ve always found video stores to be very convenient, not to mention a great excuse to go for a walk. Movieland, International, Super Club Videotron; they’re all video stores that make up part of my fairly rich movie viewing history. As soon as a movie is available for purchase, we rent it, watch it and bring it back.
Over the weekend, we stopped at the video store to return “Paddington 2”, which I quite enjoyed. I told you it was fairly rich. There was a notice on the door explaining that the store would be closing permanently. Now we’re wondering what we’ll do to watch movies in the comfort of our home.
Frankly, Netflix sucks. We occasionally watch movies on the service but they are certainly not the latest releases. We rarely find the movies or television shows we want to watch. Often, we end up watching stuff because it’s there, not because it’s our choice.
I’m already wistful about record stores. I miss records and buying CD’s. There’s something exciting about having a physical copy of an artist’s record, or CD, in your hand, as opposed to blended into some infinite and impersonal list of 1’s and 0’s on an iPod or, worse, somewhere in cyberspace.
I don’t miss videocassettes, but I will miss DVD’s.
My son does not watch movies, but suggested iTunes as a possible solution to our movie viewing problem. Another possibility is Amazon. Do we stream or download? It seems everyone has a questionable website to suggest. “Why pay?” they scoff. Piracy schmiracy. Great.
A DVD just seems so much simpler. I know; in a year I’ll be asking indignantly, “Who goes to a video store?” Like the dodo bird, they and all their members will be extinct. Until then, I feel like, yet again, we’re being forcibly funneled into the flow of choiceless fools.
I’m pressing rewind, but no such luck.
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