I totally agree. Blockbuster came in with low rental fees, wiped all other shops out, and then jacked up the fees. The selection was horrible, and I'm going to miss absolutely nothing about those. Only landlords should care.

Yeah, fuck Blockbuster. They bought one of Denver's better independent shops in the 90s, which had a great stock of out of print pornos going back to the dawn of VHS rentals, and they destroyed them rather than sell them off because they're old-fashioned censoring assholes.

Remember "Lackluster Video" from the Family Guy? Totally true, and glad they are gone. I just may need to check out a bunch of movies and not bother to return them.

Call it payback time!

Don't forget Rain City! I love those guys.

Blockbuster is going bankrupt, eh?

Couldn't have happened to a nicer place.

I agree. Blockbuster was always shit. More than once I found myself in one with ZERO GOOD MOVIES in it. just eight million copies of fucking Jurassic Park.

Another vote for Rain City, and glad I'm not the first.

They should have carried porn.

I hope their demise creates enough of a vacuum for good, local videos stores to prosper from. Despite a Netflix account, I've been visiting the only video store I truly enjoy in SF (Le Video) more lately, and I'm happy to see it's still bustling.

As a former employee of BBV, this fills me with glee. But I'll believe it when I see it, as Blockbuster's downward spiral has been going on for almost a decade now.

Rain City kidnapped my baby and ate my spleen!

Yeah - fuck Blockbuster.

I'm not even suppose to BE here today.

They deserve it. Broke my heart by not having season 6 of LOST the day it came out, and by the time they got it in, they only had one copy of each disc which was promptly rented out. I have serious television blue balls.

If Netflix starts renting games, it's all over. And no, I don't use Gamefly. Every time I ever wanted a newer or popular game it was impossible to get.

Also, fun story...one month in 2001, we got word that we would be clearing out all old VHS movies that hadn't rented in the last year in order to make room for the mass influx of catalog titles we'd be getting on DVD. At the time, that particular store (U Village) had a really solid selection of movies, including TONS of out-of-print films. We weren't going to try and sell them, we were just told to take a sledgehammer to them and then toss them in the trash. Now, we were getting rid of literally thousands of tapes, so to try and destroy them would have been time-consuming, so we just put them in black trash bags and tossed them in the dumpster (we also rounded up all the family movies and donated them to the Children's Hospital). Word *somehow* got out that there were trash bags full of movies in our dumpsters and people were more than willing to stop by after-hours and dumpster dive. One night the dumpster was literally overflowing, and the next morning all it had were the actual bags filled with garbage. The higher ups were really unhappy about that as well as the donated videos. Classy company.

A couple months later, we were all trained on how to sell DirecTV. Blockbuster was simultaneously whittling away at their available product while pushing a new product that would ensure people didn't set foot in their stores. The executives all got multi-million dollar bonuses that year for such awesome forward thinking (while I was denied a few hundred bucks in tuition reimbursement with the bullshit excuse that an engineering degree was not useful for a career with Blockbuster).

So yeah, fuck Blockbuster in the ear with a big rubber dick.

Also, a shout out to Movie Madness in Portland!! Still going strong and has the most varied selection of mvies I have ever seen!! It also has a great X-Rated section. Finally got to watch Deep Throat and it was hilarious. Fuck BlockBuster!! I knew as soon as they began to charge $5 for all movies, even older ones and TV shows, that they were going out of business. Just trying to make as much money as possible before the inevitable happened.

@15 And Gamefly only has like 3 distribution centers, so it takes like 2-3 business days to get a game and 2-3 to send it back. That's a week long turn-around, and that's IF the game you want is actually available.

The disappearance of video and record stores meant many fewer places for gay people to meet and bond. (I probably made puppy-dog-eyes at Dan in Madison, WI ca. 1991 and didn't even know it.)

The growth of coffee culture helped somewhat, but music and movie choices were much better conversational launching points.

At least in small rural towns, though, video stores seem to be surviving.

word on the street (at least overseas business, that is) is that American Apparel ain't doing too good either.

In an unrelated anecdote, not a single person at the King County Dems picnic used any of their hundreds of raffle tickets to get a VHS tape of Ken Griffey Jr's Mariner greatest hits.

Either baseball is passe' (unlikely) or VHS is, like Kindle, going bye bye. Kind of like Saturday mail delivery in the US.

20 - how will BB going out of business affect the billionaire's tunnel?

not sure. I'll get back to you on that by mail.

I had heard that BB had offered to buy Broadway Market Video several times over the years. If this is true, good for Broadway Market Video! There's still another threat to the small stores--Redbox (or whatever). Jeers to QFC for hosting them. Tell your friends to skip the vending machine, help keep a couple of jobs in your neighborhood as well as an occupied storefront.

http://www.theonion.com/video/historic-b…

Red Box. It's at your grocery store.

And in your wallet.

and Video Isle

YAy! Blockbuster has always sucked. They won't even rent you "Shortbus" and they censor many movies.

Fuck them!

Add my vote for VIDEO ISLE. Besides carrying good movies, the local shops are more likely to do things like sponsor neighborhood little league teams and support local charities, like Video Isle does.

Good riddance, CockBlocker Video!