A Profile of the Alaskan Blockbusters and Their Loyal Employees

[ellie_andrews]

There’s just one Blockbuster left in America. @justinheckert traveled to the last three in Alaska on the eve of their closing to explore the end of an iconic part of cultural memories: https://t.co/HrHe3erKd6
- The Ringer (@ringer) July 19, 2018

* writer travels to Alaska to document the closing of a culture icon

Comments

[lunadonna]

Blockbuster always sucked, Hollywood video was superior. I too miss pizza and movie night, especially with Pizza Hut Cinnamon sticks! My mom and I always rented horror movies so I’ve probably seen every horror movie that came out in the early 2000s lol. Funny, I used to genuinely enjoy/get creeped out at even the stupidest d-list horror movies but now I can’t watch any horror movie on Netflix without turning it off 10 minutes in out of boredom.

[sastra_fuss]

Hollywood video was the spot, but then 2 people were murdered in the one my parents used to take us to and we never went back

[cuteej4]

Holy shit. Lol

[ellie_andrews]

i always liked hollywood video bc they had a "classics" section which i had never seen before lol

[bostongirl2003]

I moved to a small city in Maine and our local video shop closed last year. There were in a tiny spot in a cellar, basically, but in the main shopping complex in town. The landlord decided he'd rather use the space for storage.

so now this bodunk city doesn't have a movie theater or a rental place :(

[trancexperiment]

I feel like they were able to maintain some longevity even after going bankrupt. They filed for bankruptcy almost ten years ago, so the fact they still had a few locations up until a few months ago is pretty incredible tbh-versus businesses like Toys R Us, which filed Chapter 11 and closed all locations a few months later

[fraises]

We still have a family video in town and I go there often, it's dirt cheap and tbh I'm really indecisive so I like just standing there with a finite number of movies to choose from.
It's downsized location wise three times in the past few years but still there's always a lot of people there. Lotta 80s kids bringing their children for nostalgias sake, tbh.

[ellie_andrews]

we had a mom n pop rental store for the longest time, and i thought it was gonna last bc it was also a tanning salon (lol) but they recently liquidated their DVD inventory and now it's just tanning. :\

[fraises]

Lol the video store in my hometown had a tanning area too! It closed a long time ago though.

[cuteej4]

We had a mom and pop video store just down the street. It's been at least 16 years since they were around and I STILL miss it. They would let me take home the movie posters when they were done with them. They had only just started getting DVDs when they decided to pack up and move up north. I was devastated with them leaving.

[ellie_andrews]

when my best friend turned 21 (*cough 12 years ago cough*) we all piled into the car and headed to Blockbuster to rent a movie. I have a picture I took of everyone headed in. I love it; it's like an artifact.