VHS cassettes
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The Life, Death, and Afterlife of Video Stores

As chain video stores grew like kudzu, their “back rooms” began to take over and keep the store afloat through relocation and expansion until it extended like the caves of the Vatican and encompassed everything from porn to mild “adult” titles, like the Russ Meyer collection.

By
 / 29 July 2015

How many of my leisure hours – nay, hours of gainful employment – have been spent in video stores? It’s impossible to count, but such future hours can be numbered on one hand.

Mom and Pops Video Stores

My life has seen six major video stores, some of which shifted locations or belonged to franchised chains. The oldest was Universal Video, a mom-and-pop store – mostly mom, owned by an Asian-American woman in Universal City, Texas. The store was staffed exclusively by women. Extant since the late ’70s, the place was so old that it still had Beta titles for the longest time, and I rented some. This was the store of my high school years.

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