The lost civic life of movie rental stores • Hacker News Board

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#171

Post by srj » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:04 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #164

benvanderbeek wrote: post #149

This week I found a book called “let’s go all around the neighborhood” and read it to my 3 & 4 year old sons. It’s from 1982. A girl and her mother walk around doing errands. Mailing a letter at the post office. Buying shoes at the shoe store. Playing at the park. Eating at a restaurant. Going to the library. Buying an eggbeater at the hardware store. Stopping at the fruit and vegetable stand. They interact with huma…

Even in 1982 you could mail a letter from your house, order shoes from a catalog, and order delivery food to your house. Admittedly, your choices were basically pizza, subs or Chinese for that type of delivery, but still, DoorDash mostly competes with cooking at home not with going out to restaurants (in fact, it has become more common to dine out than it was in 1982). I do lament the decline of brick-and-mortar reta…

At some point UPS / FedEx became much faster. I recall ordering things in the mid 90s and it taking weeks or months to arrive. That definitely tilted shopping toward retail brick & mortar.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#172

Post by artisinal » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

benvanderbeek wrote: post #149

This week I found a book called “let’s go all around the neighborhood” and read it to my 3 & 4 year old sons. It’s from 1982. A girl and her mother walk around doing errands. Mailing a letter at the post office. Buying shoes at the shoe store. Playing at the park. Eating at a restaurant. Going to the library. Buying an eggbeater at the hardware store. Stopping at the fruit and vegetable stand. They interact with huma…

You still interact with the delivery persons of Amazon / Getir / Uber Eats. It will likely not be a very meaningful interaction as they will want to quickly move on to the next job. And thanks to globalization the delivery person sometimes doesn’t speak any languages you do. It’s not like old times where you would casually chat with the store owner.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#173

Post by nekusar » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

pseingatl wrote: post #60

everforward wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t match my experience if your bar is really as low as “won’t throw you out for not buying anything”. Obvious anecdata, but within an easy walk or bike radius of me (a couple miles) there are 3 public libraries, something like half a square mile of parks, a few public basketball courts, a few public tennis courts, a public baseball field, a bar over the baseball field that welcomes children (it’s one of the…

Consider yourself very lucky if your public libraries are not daycare for the homeless.

And that's a perfect description for how the USA has fallen.

This place IS the supposed '3rd world shithole' that Republicans say. That the libraries, the legacy from the early Carnegie 1900's billionaires, are now the climate refuge and place to try to succeed for the homeless.

We (royal) fail so many humans, prey on the absolute conquest of 'make more money at all costs'.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#174

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:09 AM UTC

buildsjets wrote: post #78

rdiddly wrote: post #49

I feel like this overstates the point a bit. The video store was always just a means to an end for me, the clerks always sullen, the process of agreeing on a movie always long & difficult. Maybe I missed out on the phenomenon he's talking about.

Perhaps the clerk was not sullen, and just preferred to stay out of other people's affairs. You're not allowed to rent here anymore! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEj6d3GTOU I don't think any movie could better capture the atmosphere and culture of a 1980s video store better than "Clerks." For example, the various types of annoying video store customers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9khHJTztKk Ordering obscene…

It's a funny movie, it definitely captures the leisurely time spent shooting the shit with various store clerks. Although I never played hockey on the roof.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#175

Post by brightball » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:10 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #166

brightball wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, agreed completely here. I spent so many hours at our local mall with my friends growing up. It had an arcade, a movie theater, book store, game store, place to eat. Our parents could just drop us there for hours. Skating rinks and bowling alleys were also a solid option. It's one of the things that make it worth the time investment to follow sports, even if you're typically not interested in it. Getting people t…

Small town malls have suffered the most but a lot of large cities still have vibrant malls to shop at and hang out at if you happen to be a teen. Dave and Busters and other similar arcade/mixed entertainment centers are also way more common now plus random things like climbing gyms, trampoline places, etc. From what I can tell skating rinks and bowling alleys are still reasonably popular especially when you factor fo…

> Dave and Busters and other similar arcade/mixed entertainment centers are also way more common now

One thing that I've realized as I have gotten older, arcades have changed a lot. Dave and Busters and other arcades are designed to extract money as quickly as possible. When I was younger, if you were good at a game you could keep playing so my friends and I got very good at these games.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#176

Post by ViscountPenguin » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:14 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #164

benvanderbeek wrote: post #149

This week I found a book called “let’s go all around the neighborhood” and read it to my 3 & 4 year old sons. It’s from 1982. A girl and her mother walk around doing errands. Mailing a letter at the post office. Buying shoes at the shoe store. Playing at the park. Eating at a restaurant. Going to the library. Buying an eggbeater at the hardware store. Stopping at the fruit and vegetable stand. They interact with huma…

Even in 1982 you could mail a letter from your house, order shoes from a catalog, and order delivery food to your house. Admittedly, your choices were basically pizza, subs or Chinese for that type of delivery, but still, DoorDash mostly competes with cooking at home not with going out to restaurants (in fact, it has become more common to dine out than it was in 1982). I do lament the decline of brick-and-mortar reta…

I've always found the concept of mailing a letter from your house really interesting. My understanding is that it's common in the US (which is why they have the little red thing on their mailboxes I think?), but I've never lived in a place where it's a thing. For such a capitalistic country, the way the US historically treated the USPS as a common civic good is really cool.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#177

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #84

> the drive-in theater took on much of the role that the earlier movie theater had played, serving as a third place for local youth and families where the space and interactions with other audience members were as important as the movie (if not more so). But even this drive-in culture began to disappear I've been kind of puzzled, since the first time I gave it any thought, why "going to a movie" is culturally thought…

Nah, Americans were going to Vaudeville theater shows before movies ever came around. The classic theater experience was the norm. Drive ins became popular in the mid 20th century (they probably weren't even possible until transistor radio era).

Movies were good for awkward teen dates when it's probably a supplemental activity to hanging out between class or after school, but as an adult I think they are not great for first dates because you don't get the time to talk or interact. Still fine as a date night for a regular relationship.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#178

Post by creamynebula » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

Capitalism replaced businesses that had a social value, in that they helped to form communities, foster dialogue, and promote concrete experiences that you had with your body, mediated by your senses and your will, for usage of tools that only exist to lock you into consumption, withour a community, in experiences that are virtual and meaningless, mediated by the tool itself and for itself.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#179

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #56

> That same time-traveling video renter might find herself startled by the employee offering to recommend a movie, or by the knot of customers hanging out by the counter, shooting the breeze and discussing film. What universe is this person from? I must have missed it...

It wasn't a universal truth some employees in stores didn't really care and were just there for a paycheck but sometimes you found good ones that were passionate and friendly.

Re: The lost civic life of movie rental stores

#180

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:31 AM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #148

The author is really romanticizing here. In 1982, video rental stores were either seedy, dedicated to porn rentals. Or, they were tucked into the back of a record store. Video cassettes were brand new in 1982; no one knew what to make of it. Heck, the industry couldn't even decide on a format (we had Betamax in my house because Mom was convinced it was the future). In fact, in those early days, I recall people were f…

In my small town Blockbuster was amazing. We had one or two video stores with tiny libraries and were poorly run before that. When Blockbuster opened we were ecstatic and mindblown by the selection. Blockbuster would often carry 30 or 40 copies of new releases and you could actually have a good shot at finding Jurassic Park or Batman or whatever the week it came out on VHS (this was early 90s). The mom and pops near me never did that and they were often disorganized and unclean.

Blockbuster may have not been the best for finding old niche classics but if your goal was to find anything mainstream released in the 80s or 90s it was great.

Many clerks were passionate about the movies even at Blockbuster, as it was one of the best places to get access to movies at a time when it was a lot of work and effort to even get ahold of a few hundred titles back then.