The Last Blockbuster

I read this article about the last remaining Blockbuster Video store, and it struck me that it was less of a store and more of a museum. Reading the article, it seems the last Blockbuster store is almost something of a historical reenactment.

You know how you can go to historical monuments and parks, and at some of them there will be someone in period costume explaining how things worked back then? Or how some people dress in American Civil War uniforms and reenact some of the battles of the war?

Maybe in another twenty or thirty years, there will be historical reenactment of video stores, with docents dressed in period-appropriate blue polo shirts and khaki pants. They’ll do demonstrations of the day-to-day activities of ancient video store clerks, such as fixing the popcorn machine, rewinding returned tapes, imposing late fees, and stopping teenagers from smoking marijuana in the bathrooms. Grade school children will marvel that these clunky black rectangles called “video cassettes” could only store a pitiful 120 minutes of video. A section of the store will be set aside to show a 12-minute educational video clip about the rise and fall of that great American institution, the video rental store, complete with somber violin music and sepia-toned photographs.

There will, of course, be a gift shop by the exit.

-JM