Blockbusted: Junior Reflects on the Demise of her Favorite Movie Rental Store

It was a Friday night family tradition for nine years: movies, O’Neill’s takeout, burnt popcorn from our temperamental microwave.

As soon as my dad got home from work, my little sister and I would hop into his white Ford F-150. He would drive us to the busiest spot in the neighborhood, the Blockbuster at 95th and Mission. The movie rental store was filled with friends from church and school. We chatted a few minutes with everyone, secretly stealing glances at what titles they were renting.

One inspirational sports movie, one comedy, and the most recent Air Bud installment later, we would be back at home, munching on Hawaiian pizza from Pizza Hut. A batch of Jiffy Pop popcorn completed the evening.

Fast-forward to September 2010.

Blockbuster has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. If Carl Icahn and the rest of the company’s owners can’t find a business model that would return the business to profitability, an institution of my childhood will be lost.

And my family will be out of options for viewing movies.

We have not started a Netflix account with good reason, nor do we rent our movies out of a Redbox vending machine like bags of Funyuns. Pay-per-view is an option, but we’re only paying for about 20 channels of basic cable right now. I’d like to have ESPN and Comedy Central before I start paying for movie channels with a limited selection.

I feel the same way I did last summer when my friend ditched me in line for the Mamba at Worlds of Fun: alone and nervous. Nobody is left to help my little sister, dad and me adjust to a rapidly changing movie rental industry.

Of course, we can really only blame ourselves. We ignored the warning signs, the same way the former movie-rental mammoth dismissed the initial success of services like Netflix. We continued old habits out of complacency, just like Blockbuster was slow to drop late fees and start a DVD-by-mail service.

We should have known it was time to abandon ship when the blue awning came down at Blockbuster’s Prairie Village location. When the outlines of those trademark yellow block letters were all that remained on the fake stucco. When a Peach Wave and Bravo Nails took our beloved Blockbuster’s place. It was the beginning of the end.

Pause. Rewind to pre-bankruptcy.

I remember the dry spells when no new movies came out that were worth renting. After scanning the shelves of new releases along the perimeter of the store without luck, we had to pick through the offerings in the middle aisles before checking out.

Then there were the times when we could pick out five movies and never get to all of them before the weekend ended. Eventually my dad had to implement a three-movie limit. That’s when we would bargain with each other, saying, “If you get this, I’ll get that” and then make lists of what to get next time.

And if a movie ever wasn’t there, David the manager would let us look through the returns cart to find what we wanted, as was the case when the ever-popular National Treasure came out. With older movies, like Father of the Bride and Pink Panther, David would search on his store computer to find the section they would be located in.

I remember when the switch from VHS tapes to DVDs was a big deal. And when video games were given a section on the floor. The time when the gumball machine by the door gave me two gumballs instead of the usual one for a quarter.

But when our neighborhood Blockbuster closed, we had to start going to the one on State Line. Finding movies there was like finding where your favorite cereal is when you start going to a new grocery store. Because of this, and because it’s further away from our house, my family is now renting movies less.

Netflix’s rent-by-mail option is an alternative. But it takes away some of the joy of discovery we had with Blockbuster, when we were able to pick up a movie we would never have seen in theaters. How can we find obscure movies as easily with Netflix, when we’re searching online?

We could always stream movies through our Wii or on the family laptop, but if we have to watch videos at 280p on YouTube just to get them to play back smoothly, I don’t think we can stream feature films on the laptop, much less the Wii. A bad internet connection also affects the speed of downloads from iTunes.

And perhaps most important, the difference between ordering movies online and driving to a store to get them is the interaction between people. When you’re online, you can’t get movie recommendations from the greasy haired film geek, high schooler with multiple piercings, or Wanda the helpful middle aged woman who knows all the best romantic comedies. These people are part of the neighborhood fabric in a way that Netflix, Redbox, Pay-per-view or iTunes will never be.

So with Blockbuster headed toward doom, my dad, sister and I will be going at it alone. I guess we’ll just have to adjust, changing our “media habits.” There seems to be no choice but to get with the times. Friday nights as I knew them will never be the same.