Vidiots: The Last Great Video Store in LA

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Jan 31, 2015.

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  1. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Here's a remarkable short film about this very eclectic video rental store -- it's more like a museum than a store -- which still survives on Pico Blvd. at 3rd Street in Santa Monica, almost 30 years after it started in the 1980s. After all the big chains like Blockbuster have folded, somehow Vidiots survives...



    And before anybody asks, no, I've never been there, and I was christened "Vidiot" by my old pal Rich Chace in 1980, when we worked together at Modern Videofilm in Hollywood. (The head Universal attorney had originlly called me a "Betamaniac" in the Sony/Universal Betamax lawsuit, but my Beta usage tapered off in the 1980s as I gravitated towards Laserdisc and eventually DVD.)

    Vidiots -- now a non-profit organization -- is preserving a lot of very, very obscure VHS and DVDs that, for whatever reason, kind of slipped through the cracks and were never remastered or re-released in any form. I like the idea of this company very much. It's the kind of thing I would do if I had De Lotto money.
     
  2. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Thanks! that was wonderful...yes, it's all about the movie!
     
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  3. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Very cool.

    In my little town a Blockbuster was probably never going to happen. And fortunately it never did.

    Oddly yet luckily the first place to rent a movie in my town was the local Citgo gas station just a stones throw from my house, they were a very early rental place, well before most, & had a few carousels of great selections of movie tapes and a few rental VHS or BETA machines, as the question asked then went, VHS or Beta?

    The owner was a movie buff, which really made it happen so early on in the infant days of movie/player rentals. If you did not get there early, everything was rented out back then. He even ordered me my first WC Fields VHS tape long before I would've found it elsewhere.

    Citgo is still there, rentals decades gone. But that first rental opportunity was a watershed moment for me, an amazing time when several years earlier it was only still a dream.

    About 2 years later we got very fortunate and a killer private run store opened called Video Country and the guy that ran it was very cool as was his son, both were into not only movies but music, so a visit there for a tape rental (and later DVD) was always an enjoyable long chat about music, some rental recommendations and long movie discussions. That interaction was really a part of the whole movie experience as odd as that now sounds.

    And his VHS rental selection was really quite impressive back in the day, yes I even found my teen drive in fav there, 2,000 Maniacs from 1964!

    He finally closed up about 5 years or so ago after branching out into offering tanning beds and cutting the DVD rental section in half to make room for them he still could not make it.

    A nice little coffee shop is there now, with a nice vibe, but I REALLY miss that video store.

    Good times. Good memories of back when I simply could not afford to buy everything I'd like to see, rental was a godsend for me, (and my family.)
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
    Mark Nelson and Vidiot like this.
  4. Mark Nelson

    Mark Nelson Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    One of the things I loved (or appreciate now in retrospect) about the initial VHS rental explosion was that it was such a hot and fast-growing market
    that tons of companies leapt into the fray, grabbing and releasing whatever they could to feed the market, giving us scads of obscure titles to fill the shelves,
    many of which have still yet to see release on disc.

    One of the hidden gems of rentaldom in my town was a local mini-mart/convenience store. They had a small rack of new releases at the front of the store (which were
    overpriced to me...they apparently rented these from somewhere else for a short time, allowing them to rotate the stock to always be new, and not get stuck with the tapes
    after the shine wore off for customers), but what I loved was the nook at the back of the store (later expanded to a wall that ran along half the store) that was filled with
    older trash (heavy on the Cannon canon, and other similar lower-end labels) that rented for $.99 a day, or 2 for $.99 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I loaded up there
    once a week, and got my education in the cinema of Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris there. Not great films, but fun, and the cheapness kept this kid knee-deep in
    rentals for a couple of years.
     
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