Video Rental Stores

Wahesh

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Nothing but a distant memory right now. Remember how good it was to walk through the popcorn-scented aisles looking for a good video to hire? My school bus would stop right outside Civic Video and it was considered a hangout area. About once a week I used to walk into the shop after being dropped off by the bus and just browse around and see what VHS videos there were. I would check out the new releases and also watch the previews they had on the 34cm CRT tv screens around the store. The aisle shelves made it easy to wander into the adult movies R18+ section without being seen. Then there were the video games. I remember when they had the 8 bit Sega and Nintendo games for hire. Then the Mega Drive and SNES games, followed by PlayStation, Saturn and N64. On the way out I'd look at the popcorn and snacks section and see what was on offer.

There was also a Video Ezy in the same area of shops, however that didn't last very long as Civic was much bigger. To give you an idea of how small (narrow) it was, when the Video Ezy closed down, a Newsagency opened up in its place.

After this browse I would be prepared to head to the video store on Friday nights or Saturday mornings and know exactly what to hire. I remember when the new releases were $6 overnight. I even remember the $10 late return fee (and let's consider that this is equal to Netflix monthly fee). Sometimes I would head there with my friend and he would want to hire a PlayStation overnight game and we would only manage to get through a few stages - then return the game the following day.

Then as the years went on, the old VHS tapes were sold for something like $2 each and the shops stock started filling up with DVDs instead. It was much the same as before, however they had this machine in the store that would clean/clear the surface of the DVD disc, then sell the older ones for something like $5 each.

A few more years later in 2008 I walked past the same store (shown above) and it was actually halved in size. I mean Civic Video was known to be a huge store and then to suddenly be halved right down the middle making it narrower... it didn't feel the same. It was about the same size as the narrow aforementioned Video Ezy store. My friend said that they were losing money as the rent was too high as people were downloading movies. A few more years later it was gone.

Video rental stores now are nothing but a distant memory and sadly, our children and the current generation will not be able to experience what it was like.
 
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CroydonDog

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When I was a kid we actually had a mobile van renting videos, which was cool in school holidays top have him rock up to the house for more movies and games. He also sold weed....

I have some nostalgia for the old days of video rental (as much as a kid as an adult), but not sure if its sad that we now have much more convenient opportunities like Netflix etc.

Bit like how my generation had to sneak the old man's penthouse mags - bring back memories, but I much prefer Pornhub.
 

south of heaven

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When I was a kid we actually had a mobile van renting videos, which was cool in school holidays top have him rock up to the house for more movies and games. He also sold weed....

I have some nostalgia for the old days of video rental (as much as a kid as an adult), but not sure if its sad that we now have much more convenient opportunities like Netflix etc.

Bit like how my generation had to sneak the old man's penthouse mags - bring back memories, but I much prefer Pornhub.
Or when you're olds were out and you found the vhs porn then the **** of a tape would get conveniently chewed as there pulling up in the drive way
 

Alan79

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I used to enjoy browsing the video shop. But when they switched to DVD, it used to piss me off in a massive way that my local Civic used to have the biggest collection of scratched DVD's I know of. Averaged about 3/10 DVDs that I hired and could actually watch. They lost me as a customer when I copped a $20 dollar fine for DVD's that I couldn't watch or be bothered returning the next day. I asked to get replacements for the ones I had borrowed they said fine, but they were late returns and I already had a $20 fine to pay before getting replacement DVD's.
 

Hacky McAxe

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My local video store would rent me all manner of things. And they usually wouldn't ask for any proof of who I was. Eventually some people hired about 10 movies on my account. When I went in one time they wouldn't let me borrow any more movies and said, "you haven't returned these 10 movies and you owe us $200 in late fees". Then they threatened to take me to court.

I said, "I never borrowed those movies. Maybe you can explain to the courts how you lent movies to random people without checking ID, and then explain to them how you've been loaning porn to a 15 year old"

Admittedly at least $150 of the late fees were mine but I never had to pay them. Then I joined up at another video store and started racking up late fees again. Eventually they I ran out of video stores that would rent videos to me, so I started just buying the ex-rentals for cheap.
 

Wahesh

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My local video store would rent me all manner of things. And they usually wouldn't ask for any proof of who I was. Eventually some people hired about 10 movies on my account. When I went in one time they wouldn't let me borrow any more movies and said, "you haven't returned these 10 movies and you owe us $200 in late fees". Then they threatened to take me to court.

I said, "I never borrowed those movies. Maybe you can explain to the courts how you lent movies to random people without checking ID, and then explain to them how you've been loaning porn to a 15 year old"

Admittedly at least $150 of the late fees were mine but I never had to pay them. Then I joined up at another video store and started racking up late fees again. Eventually they I ran out of video stores that would rent videos to me, so I started just buying the ex-rentals for cheap.
I remember this guy I was mates with who was the biggest tight arse used to make me return his videos because he didn't want the store owner to see him as they were late returns and he didn't want to pay the fine. I told him to stop renting them or just return them on time.
 

Wahesh

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I used to enjoy browsing the video shop. But when they switched to DVD, it used to piss me off in a massive way that my local Civic used to have the biggest collection of scratched DVD's I know of. Averaged about 3/10 DVDs that I hired and could actually watch. They lost me as a customer when I copped a $20 dollar fine for DVD's that I couldn't watch or be bothered returning the next day. I asked to get replacements for the ones I had borrowed they said fine, but they were late returns and I already had a $20 fine to pay before getting replacement DVD's.
Yeah but they were better than tapes. People used to double-tape movies while watching the original one and the quality would deteriorate. Then you would rent the original one and because of the double-tapping it would seem like you're watching a movie with a bad tv antenna.
 

KambahOne

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Good grief this brings back a lot of memories. All those hours and hours and farking hours of pirating new releases for them to end up in land fill. I dunno if it was just me, but I'd pirate a new release, watch it once, maybe twice and jam it into my collection to accumulate dust. Late fees, shitty popcorn and Beta machines that had "remote" controls with cords. Friday nights with a bottle of Black Douglass, oh the cheap years.
 

Raysie

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Used to love it when these guys used to sell their old games/stock for dirt cheap.

Also remember back in the day with PS1 games in particular. Was so damn easy copying the discs from a PC and then burning them onto CD-Rs to play on a modchipped console.
 

Noeasyday

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Taking a stroll down memory lane here!
 

Wahesh

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Used to love it when these guys used to sell their old games/stock for dirt cheap.

Also remember back in the day with PS1 games in particular. Was so damn easy copying the discs from a PC and then burning them onto CD-Rs to play on a modchipped console.
Remember when it was easy to tell which games were pirated and which were legit and PS has the black surface CDs?

I actually remember this tiny small shop in Campsie where the guy would sell pirated PS games for $25 each (a bit of a rip off) and he also added the modchip to the console to allow people to play these games. Man Sony would've lost millions of dollars on those pirates lol.

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Wahesh

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This one was pretty big in the USA. It almost looks as if you would be walking into a cinema.

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Wahesh

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This happened just last month:


‘The time was right’: Curtains close on Sydney’s last DVD rental store

The longer it survived, the more you thought it might last forever. A real-life, bricks and mortar, fair dinkum video rental store? In central Sydney? In 2022?

Well, no. In the end there wasn’t enough room in the modern world for this humble DVD store to co-exist with the juggernauts of Netflix, Stan, Amazon and Disney. The momentum of modernity was simply too great.

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People were sometimes astonished to hear there was still such a place. The technology evangelists in particular liked to scoff – who would rent a DVD when we have the wonders of streaming?

Quite a few of us, it transpired. Film Club, which shut its Darlinghurst doors at the weekend, had tens of thousands of members on its books and owner Ben Kenny says hundreds – perhaps up to 1000 – were active. About 100 were regular enough for him to know their names and faces.

As far as Kenny knows, Film Club was Sydney’s last remaining video rental store – certainly, he’s not aware of any others nearby. There used to be an association that kept track of these things, but it folded in 2016.

Kenny bought the store in 2011, when the writing was already on the wall, hoping to squeeze out another three or five years. He lasted 11. “Someone had to be the last one surviving,” he says. “It felt like a calling, really. It felt like no one else was there to grab it while it was falling.”

What Film Club really had going for it was its collection. Whether it was foreign, arthouse, queer, cult or horror, it was stuff you weren’t going to find on Netflix; movies you had never heard of but turned out to adore. Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”.

As Kenny puts it: “It was all about the serendipity of discovery and finding something you didn’t know you were looking for.”

A community sprang up around this love of film; one which Kenny now hopes to transform into a new project, though he’s not exactly sure what it will look like. He has “the real core Sydney film fans” on his books – people who came from all over the city searching for a title or a surprise.

On Saturday, Kenny gave away almost all of his remaining stock for free. This correspondent made away with the first three seasons of Lost (I’m not really sure why), a few B-grade thrillers and anything I could find starring Julianne Moore.

Some people made farewell donations; one man walking out with his stash of DVDs thanked Kenny for the years of entertainment, “particularly through lockdown”.

COVID-19 wasn’t as big a boon for video rental as one might have thought, Kenny says. He traded throughout, vending machine-style when necessary, and the store was doing OK - but eventually, it made sense to let it go.

“More than anything it just felt like the time was right,” he says. “I never wanted the store to rely on empty nostalgia or people coming just out of obligation. I always wanted it to be a living, breathing, functioning business. I wanted to get out before it became a bit sad and desperate.”

Kenny has emptied the shop, stripped the shelves and painted the walls; it’s like he was never there, he says. He has no idea what will open in his place, but “if Darlinghurst is any indication, probably another hairdresser”.

He has no regrets and no real sadness. “I think we served our purpose in the community,” he says. “We made a difference and exposed people to films they wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Film Club may have ended, but films will live on.”
 

N4TE

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The Blockbuster at Roselands which is now a subway was epic also the Riverwood pub video store has a lot of memories for me @Doogie
 
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