Remember How Awesome Renting Movies Was?

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I was having the discussion the other day reminiscing about the days of going to the movie store to rent a movie and I definitely forgot just how awesome it was.  It may sound crazy to some, especially the new generation that never got to experience it, but I very much miss going to the local movie store on the weekends to rent a movie.  Sure it’s not nearly as simple as it is now, by using your remote to scroll through Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. to stream a movie without ever having to get off your couch.  But the price tag of that simplicity is the adventure.  And that’s what I miss.

Friday evening would roll around and I remember most of the time that meant pizza and a movie.  I was a kid, but I remember it all very well.  After calling in our order at Dominos or Pizza Hut, we would stroll into our local movie store, T-Town Video.  You were met by at least 10-12 isles of movies (back in the VHS days) and the opportunities seemed endless…because they pretty much were.  You would scan all the isles to make sure you didn’t miss anything, even though you did the exact same thing the week before and the week before that.  Still, that was part of the adventure.

Then it was time to roll the dice.  As a kid, my brother and I were allowed to get one movie, so the pressure was on.  We didn’t want to ruin our night with an awful movie.  With so many to choose from, narrowing it down to one was always a fun process.  Then you took the movie cover(filled with Styrofoam) up to the counter where the employee hunted down the actual VHS tape behind them in rows of movies to place in the plastic case before giving it to you to take home.  Man, the sense of excitement on the drive home not knowing whether your carefully selected movie would be a great choice or an absolute dud.  That weekly gamble played a big part in the entire adventure.

Of course, the next step was sliding in the VHS tape into the VCR at home.  If you were lucky, you wouldn’t have to rewind it before watching it because the last person to rent it was actually courteous enough to do it for you after they watched it.  Sometimes the anticipation had to wait a little bit longer as you hit “stop” and “rewind” on the VCR, and wait a few minutes.  Then, after all that, it was finally time to start watching your movie.

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One of the cool things was, once you rented the movie, it was yours for the next 24 hours.  You could watch it as many times as your heart desired in that time span, but you had to make sure you turned it back in the next day so you wouldn’t get overcharged.  I remember if it was a movie we really enjoyed watching, we would always watch it again the next morning or afternoon before we turned it back in.  That was always the sign of a really good movie.  I’m sure the movie Sandlot got the ol’ next day re-watch.

Sometime within those 24 hours, the adventure would be all over.  Some weeks you won with your selection, some weeks you lost, but we always had to wait until the next week to start it all over again.  And of course we were always ready for it.  Sometimes we had a movie already in mind before we even walked into T-Town Video.  That was always a gamble in itself because, if it was a popular movie, there was a very good chance it would already be checked out.  You could just come back another time and try again, or in some instances when the movie was newly released, you would have to put your name on a waiting list and the store would give you a call when it was finally available, which was always an exciting moment.

I feel old in saying this, but the younger generation just doesn’t realize what they missed out on.  It may sound like a lot of work for them, having to actually get into a car and drive to a movie store to check out a movie that may or may not be there, without being able to read online reviews first, and gamble on a movie based purely on what you may have heard about it, or read on the back of its cover.  But one thing is for sure…going to the movie store was always an exciting adventure that I wish was still relevant today.  Ahh, the good ol’ days.

Garett