Driving home the other day, I was disheartened to see that my local video store was going out of business.  I have rented from Video Village in Pleasantville for over twenty years.  It is a family-owned business; the type of place that you could rent a movie for a few bucks cheaper than the local Blockbuster Video.  Also, it is the type of place that Blu Ray technology hasn’t even reached yet.

Back in 1989, I rented the Sega Genesis from Video Village.  I still remember Rahm’s (the owner) voice as he presented my brother and I with the gaming system.

“THIS is Sega Genesis,” he proclaimed in an authoritative voice.

(He said it as if he was entrusting warriors with samurai swords before heading into battle.)

I knew this was coming.  Last summer, I was in there talking to Rahm and he said he almost closed up shop last year.  His claim was that people aren’t really renting videos anymore.  Services like Netflix and On Demand are rendering these type of places obsolete – even the local Blockbuster closed down over a year ago.  Soon, Pleasantville will have gone from having two video stores to not having any.

My favorite memory of Video Village was from back in 2003.  I had just moved back to Burlington and I stopped in to grab a movie.  As I brought my selection to the counter, Rahm asked me my name and looked me up in the computer.  I wasn’t expecting to be in the system because I hadn’t rented there in about 12 years.  As I watched him hunt and peck the keys, I noticed that the computer looked very similar.  Surprisingly, I was still in there, listed under the address of the house I grew up in.

Rahm was still using the same computer.

My feelings about Pleasantville and the importance of moving back after being exiled have been fully documented on this blog.  I can honestly tell you that when I saw my name in the Video Village computer after all those years, under that old address, I truly felt home.

I’ll miss heading in there to grab a movie on my way home from wherever.  I’ll miss seeing Rahm’s smiling face behind the counter.  He would always have a movie suggestion and would never forget to hand me the latest copy of the new release pamphlet.  I’ll miss wondering why he still had more VCR tapes than DVDs and that all too familiar smell of the place.  And lastly, I’ll miss laughing to myself as I watched people make the “walk of shame” from the rear of the store (adult section) to the checkout counter.

Godspeed, Video Village.

Thanks for the memories.