Does anyone else miss going out to video stores and renting movies?

You didn't ask to be part of Generation X, nobody asked to be a Millennial or a Baby Boomer. If you are wondering what are these terms? They are simply names given to those born in a certain period of time, the 80s, the 90s, or the new millennium era.

The truth is that each generation has something good and exceptional in it, it is very easy to think that those who were born after us will never enjoy any given thing we used to dig so much, but that is precisely the beauty of being born when we were born, we had something that future generations will never have, just as we didn't get to experience things that our older brothers, uncles, and parents did.

On this occasion, we will talk about video stores (or video clubs), a must-visit place to rent the latest VHSs and DVDs. Some video stores even rented Betamax and others even rented video games, especially in the era of the Super Nintendo (SNES) and the Nintendo 64.

Everything makes me nostalgic when it comes to video stores, remembering those times being just a kiddo, heading there to get your membership, some of them were made of paper and were laminated, and some others were plastic cards with your photograph (like the ones at  Blockbuster).

Sometimes it took longer to choose the movie or movies we were going to take than to watch them, wandering through the corridors, taking the boxes to read the synopses on the back, sometimes you had already chosen a movie when you found a better one, and who didn't rent the same movie twice or more?

Also, maybe not all of us, but many of us forgot to return a movie for days or said "I'll return it tomorrow" more than once, accumulating fines.

The two video stores I liked to go to closed years ago, they could not compete with the era of the internet and satellite television, YouTube, Netflix, DirecTv, Dish and so many other services that caused video stores to close, leaving their hallways empty, corridors that once were brightened with the happiness of children and adults, an easy way to amuse a child was to suggest going to rent a movie, now children have tablets and smartphones, and if they forget them at home they will hardly have fun with something else, for us even uncovering the VCR to clean it with alcohol and cotton was fun.

There are still some video stores subsisting, but now they also sell toys, collectible items, candy, sodas, even t-shirts, anything to remain on business, I hope that one day they will resurface as something vintage so I can take my children to live the experience.


By the way:

What happened to those Redbox machines? I haven't seen them in a while and they used to be everywhere.



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