Three Video Rental Stores

Written By Daniel Imrem

The store with the curtains

I don’t remember the name of the first video rental store my family frequented.

It was located next to a grocery store we shopped at, and we would stop in throughout the week while resupplying to rent the occasional movie. Being about six or so at the time, the store fascinated me: the rows of films towered over my head and I could spend hours inside, simply reading one description after the other, just getting high off the wonderful imaginings of what their contents must have contained.

After a while, my parents would leave me in the store to browse while they went about shopping next door, an arrangement I greatly enjoyed. On one such occasion, I determined myself to index every section of the store. As fate would have it, this was the day I stumbled upon a section I’d never discovered before:

A curtained section.

As I’m sure some of you are anticipating, the films I found behind that curtain were quite unlike any that I had been previously familiar with. Almost instantaneously, certain associations with short skirts, cheer-outfits, and nuns were suddenly and irreparably formed.

I remember mostly an enormous feeling of curiosity at the time. There was something so viscerally alien about the world I’d stumbled into-- the strange shades of pink and pale and red, the strange rituals, the strange organs and fluids. And the similarities between the releases struck me as strange as well-- such consistency of tone across what seemed to be so many disparate works by such a multitude of people. I was puzzled by their sameness.

Older men would periodically come in through the curtains. Most left as soon as they saw me back there, which I didn’t mind-- I’ve never particularly enjoyed being crowded when I’m browsing. Sometimes one would stay for a while, making his selections carefully before leaving, with neither of us so much as glancing in the direction of the other.

Eventually, after what must have been hours, I was discovered. A man, who was the clerk for the store at the time, peaked his head inside the curtains and informed me that my mother was waiting for me outside. Apparently she’d come into the store multiple times trying to find me, but having not noticed the curtained corner of the store, believed I’d wandered away.

She’d been in a panic for hours.

This built-up panic she unleashed on the clerk in the form of rage. I’d never seen her so angry before in my entire life.

It was only then that I began to feel ashamed.

We never went back to that rental store. Not long after, it went out of business. To this day, I still think about it every time I go past.

Insomniac Video

Insomniac video was located between a small family-operated laundromat and an infamous local pizza place that was rumored to have once served someone a dead rat in their pepperoni pie. I wonder how many small towns have this exact same local legend.

Insomniac Video specialized in cult classics and other rarities; it was through them that I got the chance to see Godzilla fight not only Megalon and Mechagodzilla, but King Kong as well.

I remember very distinctly holding that vhs copy of King Kong vs Godzilla and thinking to myself:

‘This is it. This must be the greatest movie of all time.’

Unfortunately, the store was on its way out long before I’d started visiting it; the owner worked the counter and would openly bemoan how little time the store had left. You never knew if the place would still be open when you came to return your movies. I tried not to get too attached to it.

With an air of finality, Insomniac eventually did close down in 2008, and from what I can tell its special catalogue of odds and ends was donated almost entirely to our local library. For years after, whenever I stumbled upon a silver “Insomniac Video” label on a dvd in the library, I regarded it as a sign of quality, and made sure to check them out.

Much later, when I was in high school, a family friend took me to a few small retrospectives at our local indie theater, each organized and hosted by the man who used to own Insomniac. He showed classics like Out of the Past, Whistle down the Wind, and Bigger than Life-- each time spinning an intricate story about how he’d tried to obtain an original print for our show and how he’d gotten so close, before apologizing and explaining that the projection would yet again have to be digital.

Nobody ever seemed to care.

The venue could only ever hold maybe fifty people at max capacity, but more often than not every one of those seats except my own would be occupied by a butt belonging to someone older than the age of seventy. You honestly couldn’t have asked for a better audience.

The Crossroads

Crossroads video was located in a tiny cul-de-sac shaped shopping center at the very end of a street near our home. In a weekly routine, my mother would drive my sister and I down every Thursday for the deal of a lifetime-- five movies for five days for only five dollars.

I would walk through its doors, past the return slot for films, past the bin for free posters, past the girl who worked behind the counter, until I finally arrived at my corner in the far end of the store. The layout was fairly simple; the center of the store was occupied by dramas, romance movies, and comedies, while the new releases took up the back of the store— leaving my coveted horror and sci-fi films tucked away in the farthest corner.

In theory, each of us, my mother, my sister, and myself, would get to pick one movie for ourselves with the final two being reserved as ‘family movies.’ However, in practice both my mom and sister would typically cave to my begging and I usually walked out with three or more movies of my choosing.

Sometimes, my sister and I would make a bid for a film that was a little bit out of our age range. In turn, so as to make an informed decision, my mom would then ask the cashier behind the counter if she’d seen the film and whether or not she felt it was appropriate for children.

I cannot stress this enough-- both me and my sister HATED this girl.

What was so irritating about her was that she only ever looked at most about five years older than us, but carried an air of superiority that made us seethe with rage. We couldn’t decide what the greater injustice was-- be it our mother was asking a child what was appropriate for other children, or the fact that this other kid would straight up stab us in the back and be honest. Where was her fucking solidarity?

Eventually of course, we grew up and all rating restrictions were dropped. More and more it seemed like my tastes in films coincided with those of the girl behind the counter, and we’d end up talking more about them. By the time I checked out The Battle of Algiers she revealed to me that she’d written her college thesis on the film.

From then on I fantasized about working at Crossroads. It seemed like a dream job; just being surrounded by movies all day. Putting whatever film I wanted on and watching it play out across several different television sets situated throughout the store-- I wondered if I’d ever get a shift with this girl I’d known for so long from one side of the counter. Maybe she’d be the one to show me the ropes.

Of course, I never did get the job. And of course, I never can now.

One winter break from college I went home to see that it had closed. Now, what was once Crossroads Video is a clothing boutique store. This fact fills my mouth with bile.

I remember when I was very young learning about the concept of a ‘happy place’; a mental envisioning of an environment, either real or imagined, which brings soothing to the person picturing it. At the time I think I regarded it more as a theatrical construct rather than something real people did, simply because I couldn’t relate to it. Every part of the world seemed equally foreign and indifferent to me; with none of it feeling particularly safe or ‘happy’.

But years after it has ceased to exist, I think I finally realize where my ‘happy place’ was:

My own little corner of Crossroads Video.