The lost civic life of movie rental stores

Posted by facundo_olano 4 days ago

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Comment by steveBK123 4 days ago

The end of interest-based 3rd places is one of the many things contributing to the compartmentalization / socioeconomic bubble of modern society.

People used to frequent in person things like specialty retailers, arcades, hobby clubs, religious groups, etc. When you meet real life people in person based on shared interests, you make connections across socioeconomic groups.

I just don't see nearly as much of this in todays society as 20+ years ago.

People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to, but even there a lot of kids activities have become economically stratified. Instead of playing in the local $50/year rec baseball league, there's tiers of travel teams to meet any budget.

Comment by afavour 4 days ago

> People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to

This is something welcome I didn’t expect to come from parenthood. Like many others I had thought to myself “how do you even make new friends in your thirties?!” and then once I had kids… bam. New friendship groups.

For us the local park and playground are a great equalizer in terms of economic stratification. But when the weather turns bad it rears its head again as people head to $50 a go trampoline parks and the like.

Public school is another unifier, of course. I’m in NYC and our preschool was very obviously not a reflection of the neighborhood or city around us. But once my kids entered the city-funded Pre-K they started to meet a ton of kids from different backgrounds. It’s very different from the childhood I had but I’m very glad my kids have it.

Comment by pstuart 4 days ago

I kind of experienced that but the relationships were more superficial than I'd have liked. If the "shared interest" is happy kids together it doesn't directly translate to the adults shared interests. But then again, maybe it was just me being me.

Comment by SoftTalker 4 days ago

Same, the relationships were all sort of "convenience" relationships that were dependent on the kids activities to sustain. Once the kids were older, or their interests changed, and there wasn't a scheduled game or event to bring everyone together, those relationships just evaporated.

Comment by pavel_lishin 4 days ago

It's a good jumping off point, but becoming friends requires time and work.

When we're young, we have nothing but time spent together. As adults, who spend an hour at the local park with some kids, those relationships require more effort to grow.

We have a few friends we've made through our kid, and it definitely takes more work to maintain - but it's been very worth it so far.

Comment by Peacefulz 3 days ago

As I age, my desire for friends for friends' sake diminishes. If someone doesn't offer something to my life that I value, I'll have a hard time putting energy into them.

It was so easy to make strong bonds as a kid, captive with other kids in a building most of the time. Now there is a cost:benefit I have to weigh a persons worth to me against.

Comment by pstuart 3 days ago

> becoming friends requires time, work, and a mutual desire for friendship

FTFY ;-)

Comment by pavel_lishin 3 days ago

How dare you imply that people don't want to be my friend! I'M PLEASANT AND LIKEABLE PERSON, YOU JERK!

Comment by 4 days ago

Comment by skeeter2020 3 days ago

overall I had a very similar experience, but did make a few very good, long-term friends out of it that have survived our kids growin up and apart.

Comment by enobrev 3 days ago

I miss the neighborhood officianados.

The movie buff at the blockbuster.

The music fiend at the local record shop

The gamer at the mom & pop game store.

The guy at Egghead Software who would let me play battle chess for hours.

Of course there are millions of them online these days, but that face-to-face interaction with the local officanado was a different thing. It wasn't a forum. And oddly, it wasn't a library either - it was a place of business - but it didn't feel like one in those moments.

Nerding out with a local stranger over a movie or a game or a band was something very different from what we do today. It was a different way for the local nerds to shine, while making a living adjacent to the things they knew so well.

Comment by tengbretson 3 days ago

The quality of your local nerd has also likely decreased substantially. Being a nerd used to be a lot more work. Now, if you're having a face-to-face interaction with a local aficionado there's a high chance you're just interacting with a walking TTS version of Reddit.

Comment by Animats 3 days ago

The classic nostalgia version of this is the opening of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982). Ridgemont Mall in the movie is the Sherman Oaks Galleria, which has appeared in at least 12 movies, and is still operating as a mall.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weKrwubPbeI

Comment by JKCalhoun 3 days ago

"…the Sherman Oaks Galleria…"

Yeah, there are some things I'm not nostalgic for at all.

Comment by steveBK123 3 days ago

There's still some record shops if you know where to look. Physical media is making something of a resurgence including with GenZ.

I was half joking with a friend that I want a everything-middle-aged-man-store open weekends (and maybe 5-8pm thursday/friday) that carries a hodge hodge of physical media, used hobby kit and maybe serves espressos/teas, does hair cuts.. and maybe do some basic EV car maintenance like tire rotation/annual state safety inspection.

Some place I can take care of needs and also enjoy some wants.

Comment by mmh0000 3 days ago

You’re not going to like this answer. But I think you’ve just described a Walmart Supercenter.

Comment by enobrev 3 days ago

Most definitely. I'm fortunate to have four record shops in my neighborhood, and I make my way to them every couple months. Along with some friends of mine, we trade off hosting record-listening parties a few times a year.

I love that vinyl has remained relevant. I believe that's true because of the record shop experience. It's one of the few places, besides maybe a cocktail bar, where you can expect to converse with a local expert at length while they're simply doing their job.

Comment by joe_the_user 3 days ago

Perhaps it matters where you grew up. I grew up in LA and was a young in the Bay Area. I experienced none of what you describe and I was often in shops. Me and a friend would go to Rhino Records near Westwood. I understand it was a legendary record store. But even being there wasn't particular social. The only hang-out shop was Epicenter Zone in SF - but that was specifically intended to not be like your usual shops, which weren't social venues.

Comment by rightbyte 3 days ago

I think it has to be a somewhat smaller sized shop with the same 3 staff on rotation for the social thing. Applied to both my video store and game store in the 90s early 00s.

Comment by JKCalhoun 3 days ago

Yep. Streetside Records in Kansas City, not that Tower Records crap.

Employees got to put on whatever music they wanted.

I should ask my friend who worked there—but there was a lot of fun they had with that. Perhaps, with their musical selections playing on the store speakers, they were even trolling some customers from time to time.

(I know they enjoyed playing John Foxx's single "Endlessly" when Ann Lassley was in the store since it sounded like Foxx was singing her name.)

Comment by jonhohle 3 days ago

I worked at a mall chain video store in the 90s. We’d play Star Wars on the mall facing screens which would inevitably bring people in. Sorry, it’s out of print. The employee recommendation endcap always contained quirky and unique titles as well.

Comment by throwaway2037 3 days ago

I found some info about the Epicenter Zone in SF here: https://www.foundsf.org/Epicenter_Zone

Comment by asdff 3 days ago

Should have gone to The Record Collector if you wanted to experience a real character

Comment by darth_avocado 3 days ago

Lack of cheap real estate is the root of all problems. Some will point to private equity buying up everything and ruining (baseball, bowling etc.). If you had cheap real estate, you can still operate a business and compete, but once your landlord raises rent every year regardless of how your business is doing, even the successful ones have to pack their bags. So many successful businesses in my city and the neighboring cities have shut down simply because “they couldn’t come to a mutual agreement on the lease with the landlord”.

Comment by prawn 3 days ago

I used to think you wanted to own the premises you operated out of, but you're probably just better off leasing it out and getting paid whether the business had a tough month or not.

Comment by rightbyte 3 days ago

And why operate a franchise yourself when you can just own stock.

I believe the social feedback is what have gotten so bad. Too much bog corps and remote landlords to care.

Comment by roysting 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by rodet 3 days ago

How many homes did China build since the 1990?

Comment by pitched 3 days ago

This comes across as an unhinged boomer rant but is probably more right than wrong.

I have seen fast food chains in the US offering $30/h and that is a life-changing amount of money for a lot of the world. Immigration, as in an individual’s choice to immigrate or not, and the effect they might have, is a supply and demand question.

Comment by roysting 6 hours ago

Immigration is not an individuals choice at all, unless you think burglary should be an individual's choice too; the government just decides that your house is allowed to be burglarized by someone that gets a permit to legally burglarize? ... and I guess the effect on your belongings is a supply and demand question, they demand it and you supply your things they burglarize and then sell to the government chop shop that makes the ruling class rich off of the burglary they made "legal". That's essentially the psyop the have people supporting.

It's quite impressive how they've done it, including that "immigration" is immensely damaging to the source country too and arguably even more damaging than the destination country because no developing country will ever emerge from developing if all its best are immediately siphoned out of the developing country into the rich country. It's basically nothing different than a far more sophisticated, complicated, complex, psychologically manipulative version of what people like calling "slavery", sucking resources out of one group to support the decadent parasitic lifestyle of another group. It's the same ruling class parasite playbook they have used for millennia. They just change the methods, branding, and approach a bit sometimes to adapt it to the technological and practical environment.

Unfortunately for us all, the propaganda machine of the corporations have inoculated or conditioned many people to see certain facts as unappealing through various forms and methods of social cues that start with children, i.e., it's basically grooming by the ruling class to condition children who grow up into mindless young adults that thin they know everything because they stepped out of their parent's assisted living into college assisted living and then join corporate assisted living...

It largely came out of the research of the early 20th century, practice of "world wars" and all he famous programs that have also been made unpalatable for people to think, let along hear about, not to mention tooling that was developed during the Iraq war (remember how that was not at all a blatant psyop?), much of which I have direct knowledge of in ways I can't elaborate on.

I know that may sound like just more "unhinged boomer rant", even though ironically, most boomers are very much system loyalists, which is why they also largely trend "GOP" or "Conservative" or "Right"; i.e., system servant, mostly out of greedy, ignorant, jealous, decadent, narcissistic self-interest.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by 01284a7e 4 days ago

Putnam's "Bowling Alone" (2000) is about this, and it is something that has been in decline since the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone.

Comment by bookofjoe 3 days ago

"The Pursuit of Loneliness" (1970) — Philip Slater

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807042013?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Slater

Comment by brightball 4 days ago

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 together to watch the game, go to games, tailgate, etc is huge.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

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 for entertainment centers that have mini bowling alleys (much more common now).

Comment by brightball 3 days ago

> 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.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

There are arcades in Austin that charge a cover and just allow free play (typically subsidized by beverage sales). But some have the Dave and Busters model. The games are definitely more expensive than they were. In 80s and early 90s a $2 or $3 stack of quarters would grant a fair amount of entertainment.

Comment by williamcotton 3 days ago

Do you mind sharing which ones?

Comment by vel0city 3 days ago

Not Austin, but in DFW there's a local chain called freeplay arcade. Its a ~$13 cover charge and then unlimited gaming.

https://freeplayinc.com/

While not totally covered by a cover charge, there's also an arcade called Nickelrama. Cover charge, and then all games cost like 1-6 nickels.

https://nickelrama.com/

There's a brand called Cidercade (used to be very affiliated with a cidery), they've apparently got a location in Austin as well. Similar story, $12 cover, all games included.

https://cidercade.com/

Comment by chrisco255 2 days ago

Cidercade on Riverside in Austin is one of the spots I was thinking of. They have a pretty good selection of old arcades.

There is also Pixel Palace in Round Rock that has no cover but most games are 25 cents.

Austin Toy Museum has a bunch of arcades ($17 entrance fee). Austin Pinball Collective for mostly pinball.

Pinballz is good too but expensive and does the Dave and Busters model, however, most of their classic arcades are cheap to play.

Comment by steveBK123 3 days ago

I recently stopped by my hometown mall for the first time in 20 years. I described it to a friend as "it was like a neutron bomb went off".

It had been a middle/upper middle class mall back then - big fast food filled food court, Macys/Filenes/Lord&Taylor, it even eventually got (and lost) an Apple Store.

It was essentially empty and the stores had all gone down market. The nicest clothing store was H&M, and a bunch of storefronts were taken over by random nameless resale small businesses.

Comment by gnz11 3 days ago

Forget corporate owned malls, what US towns need are actual downtowns. When I first came to the US I was shocked at either the lack of a downtown or if there was one, it was mostly run down and abandoned. Sometimes the "downtown" was just an intersection of strip malls. I suppose the oddball zoning rules in the US don’t help but so many "towns" in the US are just blobs of buildings and not actual towns.

Comment by chrisco255 23 hours ago

Most towns in U.S. have historical downtowns with a main street, court house, library, police station, etc and a collection of retail stores, it just likely isn't on the main highway, you have to look it up but they're definitely very common in at least the bigger cities of the county they are situated in.

Some are rundown, but theres thousands that are well kept. They just aren't the main shopping hubs they used to be, mostly boutique stores, coffee shops, barber shops, etc.

Comment by beloch 3 days ago

Stop using Amazon and see what happens.

I stopped using Amazon early last year (because Canadian). I was forced to find local shops for the stuff I was getting online and, to my surprise, a lot of those specialty retailers are still out there. Some are a bit more expensive. Some are, surprisingly, not. At many places, the staff are still a fantastic resource.

There's a world beyond Amazon that's still out there, alive and kicking. All you have to do is stop making Amazon your first and last place to look for things.

Comment by iteria 3 days ago

The question becomes how long do I have to drive? I feel like your idea only works in a city. Target stopped carrying a soap that worked for my kid and that was it for options as far as stores with specialty soaps that aren't abour perfumes and scents. After that, it's scouring Facebook for a local person who makes it and hoping they decide to keep their hobby going (the ine I found didn't ). Then I'm back to Amazon.

That's assuming I can find a local person or shop. Sometimes I luck up like I found a guy who sharpens basically everything with a blade. I found a tailor who is willing to make fulfill these insane request I have like create me a set of mini-crab sheets made from bamboo. But then, I can't anyone who sells a safety can opener or a jar opener that actually works well (most are crap). Toys feel impossible if you don't want plastic crap. So on, so on. Buying local is a really hard when you're in a small town. I think 100K or more is the sweet spot where it's probably possible.

Comment by beloch 3 days ago

Yes, you'll fail to find some things locally and have to order it online. The key is not to go to Amazon first, because then you're guaranteed not to find the local alternatives.

Comment by Cthulhu_ 4 days ago

The internet has largely replaced / substituted this, which has been a mixed thing. Like minded people in smaller niches have been able to find each other online for example, much more than IRL, and much more at long range / internationally. It's made the world a smaller place, at the cost of knowing people closer to home.

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

It’s been a disaster.

It sounds good in principle. And I was very excited when discovering the Internet (Usenet) and a place to discuss all my geeky interests with many similar minded people.

However, now that the Internet has so overpowered in person relationships across the board, the cost in mental health, anxiety and general unhappiness is staggering.

Comment by BeetleB 4 days ago

It's not an all-or-nothing.

If you live in a society that really devalues everything you like, having that online outlet is the difference between giving up on life[1], and being passionate.

Imagine being told you're broken because you like books, movies, and video games, and having almost every aspect of society reinforce that message.

[1] Not in the suicide sense, but in the "Life will always suck" sense.

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

I was that kid.

Going to a university in a city helped a lot with that. Long conversations about comic books with friends, going to the nearby comics store on new release day with lots of other nerds, etc.

I’m no longer convinced adding the Internet to that has been a net positive. Maybe if we could have froze its growth and development at some specific point…?

Comment by mckee_plus_plus 4 days ago

Discord has done wonders for gaming shops keeping people connected and organizing in between weekly game sessions.

Meetup could be superceded by the hitch/tinder model to organize activities with individuals over scheduled events ran by organizers.

Comment by BeetleB 4 days ago

It helps before you get to university, and once you leave. The place you live for work may have very few people with similar interests.

Comment by cucumber3732842 4 days ago

>It’s been a disaster.

It wasn't a disaster until megaplatforms came alone.

Comment by Gud 4 days ago

Because back then the Internet was a hobby itself. Normal people(for a lack of better word) mostly weren't online.

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

You had to actually deliberately "go online." None of this always-on cable connection at home, let alone always-on wireless in your pocket. Nope, you had to deliberately decide "I'm going to go into the online world now." and then later "I'm going to go back to the real world." Much better IMO.

Comment by SoftTalker 4 days ago

It's always this way. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et. al. killed the social internet, as Amazon and Walmart killed the mom-and-pop retailers, as Blockbuster killed the local video stores (but then Netflix killed Blockbuster).

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

Yes but that’s my point. Taken as a whole it’s been a net negative.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

Agree. I think it might have been okay if the Internet had stayed in the naïve form it had circa 2003. In those days, I had a circle of friends on LiveJournal (the closer of which became AIM buddies as well) and I think we all derived huge positive benefits from having that in our lives.

The shift to the algorithmic "Feed" established adversarial incentives across the board - the platforms are incentivized to addict and enrage, the individuals are incentivized not to be vulnerable for friends, but to be viral and get approval of the public, since if your posts don't perform for strangers, the algorithm won't even show them to your closest friends.

The Internet gave us an easier way to make "friends" with no apparent downsides, only to rugpull us all as soon as most of the 'pre-Internet' places and social habits had been completely destroyed. Now we are all obviously lonely and hate the Internet mess, but whole generations are now too awkward to even speak to others in person, just from lack of experience.

Comment by steveBK123 4 days ago

I think its made relationships more short term and superficial.

We may recognize a handle on a forum, but most of the time we don't know anything about the other person other than a narrow part of their interests.

Comment by foobarian 4 days ago

I sometimes wonder if it was all worth it. What if we banned/rolled back the internet? Would we go back to more small-town-like community, and again have the nerd minority who "can't wait to get out of this place?" It feels like the current tech landscape is a reaction to that environment.

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

I would.

And I’m the nerd minority who “couldn’t wait to get out of this place.”

Now, I would still go to a big city where I could find people with similar interests. But the cost to society of all the Internet has wrought has been far too high.

Comment by matwood 3 days ago

> The end of interest-based 3rd places

A good jiujitsu gym is pretty amazing for this. It's a melting pot of people from all socioeconomic and political groups. It's great exercise, can be done at any age, and at any level. It also cannot be done alone. After you spend 5 minutes trying to choke someone and them you, it's hard to not have a conversation after.

Unfortunately, because it's become so popular it's gotten expensive, sometimes >$100/month.

Comment by swat535 4 days ago

It's a societal problem, mainly in the West. Many cultures around the world don't have this issue.

When I was living in Iran, we didn't need a hobby club to meet people, you just picked up the phone and everyone came over. I have vivid memories of going on trips with 5 cars filled with people

When I went to Peru with my wife to meet her extended family, it was very similar. Heck you can just randomly talk to people and meet them. At 9PM, the streets are exploding with people in Arequipa or Tehran.

The biggest difference is that in the West, people have the idea of "personal space", which doesn't really exist in some culture. People are seen more as one, rather than many. Of course this has its own downsides, but I suppose nothing is perfect.

Comment by ohyoutravel 4 days ago

You picked up the phone and everyone came over, that’s cool. What number did you call? Was this a public service of some sort?

Comment by Loughla 3 days ago

I'm not sure if you're joking, but I think it was implied that OP called the people.

Comment by vladvasiliu 3 days ago

Right. I think the underlying question is, how do you get to know these people in the first place?

Isn't this the whole point of the discussion? How do you initially get to know people?

Comment by ohyoutravel 3 days ago

Yes this is the meta point I was working at. OK any of us can call our friends to come over, how does one make the friends in the first place!

Comment by runamuck 3 days ago

I recommend a group fitness class gym. This brings me much joy and I lost 60 pounds. A positive 3rd space.

Comment by joe_the_user 3 days ago

I was around for many of these things. At different points in my life from the 70s to the 90s, I'd hang around arcades, the local coop bike shop, a hobby shop that specialized in D&D and occasionally an alternative video rental place. It was honestly miserable. Shops seldom facilitated socializing but when that was it, some people did it. (religious groups are in a completely different category, I think and one didn't experience).

The era when people semi-hung out at shops wasn't the "glory days" but their end. The era, that I get only historical research, where you had broad socializing was the era of clubs organized around neighborhoods and interests. American society was pretty isolated by the 1950s and only got more so after that.

Comment by sublinear 3 days ago

Thank you for saying this. I'm in my late 30s, so I only experienced the tail end of it.

I remember everyone was stressed out all the time. Attitude was sorta: "I did not drive all this way just for you nor to be told...". Karen was not just that one lady. It was everyone. Customer service was objectively worse in most places than it is today. Hearing screaming babies and feeling carsick all the time was just a fact of life. Food was worse. Cars were ugly and slow. Disgusting smells were inescapable. People had no shame and were not shy with the vulgarities.

I suspect the audience pining for those days is split between the would-be perpetrators of the unpleasantness and younger people not knowing what to expect.

I implore those young people to search for "peopleofwalmart" and then imagine overhearing the worst parts of reddit in real life.

Comment by joe_the_user 2 days ago

Yeah,

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone talks about the decline of community in America but the decline of community inside shops isn't mentioned because it never really existed. Taverns - yes, community once exist there but that was destroy by Prohibition, ie a long time ago. Cafe community in the US actually grew into existence in the 90s in my observation of the US.

Comment by BjoernKW 3 days ago

> The end of interest-based 3rd places

Whatever happened to pubs and the shared interest of drinking beer (and getting drunk in the process ...)? ;-)

Comment by gib444 3 days ago

In the UK: supermarkets selling cheap alcohol. Decline in drinking. Labour costs, energy costs, rent costs. House prices. Pubcos taking over.

Just battered from every possible direction

Comment by inigyou 3 days ago

Beer got replaced by TikTok as the primary form of escapism. No joke.

Comment by nekusar 3 days ago

Inordinately loud, reflective rooms. They just encourage drinking to excess, absolutely no talking (or hearing), paying, and leaving.

Comment by Loughla 3 days ago

Join a club. Lions, Masons, knights of Columbus, Oddfellows, woodworkers guild, something like that. They're dying for lack of youth membership and they're still around.

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

Unfortunately, these clubs sometimes (knowingly or unknowingly) sabotage themselves when it comes to attracting young members.

A lot of these organizations, you go there to share an interest, and you walk in and they're not really talking about their interest. To be blunt: a lot of them are just a bunch of old men griping about old-man things, making old-man jokes that were acceptable in the '80s, bringing up (ahem) old-man politics... This kind of stuff is kryptonite to a 25 year old who wants to join your club.

This is pretty much exactly what the local HAM radio org was in the place I used to live. I went to one meeting and noped out of there pretty quickly.

Comment by Broken_Hippo 3 days ago

Some of the organizations mentioned have never welcomed me - the first hurdle to some of these is simply being female. Freemasons only accept men IIRC. Knights of Columbus? Catholic. Oddfellows acceptance really depends on the individual lodge, despite what the literature says. These organizations aren't always in smaller areas either, so you aren't joining if you are in a small town an hour's drive from the nearest meeting place.

Comment by rickydroll 3 days ago

Our astronomy club is the same way. Except it's a bunch of people standing around in the dark, looking at things through telescopes. And then, when everybody's seeing the object, we move on to the next one. We have a few folks active in things like astrophotography, variable star observing, and tracking carbon stars, but these are pretty obscure corners that it takes a newbie time to warm up to.

Comment by JKCalhoun 3 days ago

Yeah, the DMV is basically about it now.

Comment by m463 3 days ago

Meetups? conferences?

Comment by benvanderbeek 3 days ago

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 humans at most stops.

I thought - in 2026, we can instead text, buy shoes and eggbeaters (?) online, stream / scroll content on devices, order restaurant food on DoorDash and groceries on Instacart.

We’re told “you’ll no longer have to” and “now you’ll be able to” with each new technological development. But there’s always a hidden “now you’ll have to” and “you’ll no longer be able to”.

Comment by mc32 3 days ago

A bit tangential, but I think something similar to what we see here happen (time saved by modern convenience does not result in pursuit of "personal interests" other than wasting time with technology-enabled entertainment.

People think UBI will unleash creativity and people will engage in their true calling in life. I don't see that happening. I see people sinking more of their lives into things that are at war for their eyeballs.

Comment by tyrust 3 days ago

> But there’s always a hidden “now you’ll have to” and “you’ll no longer be able to"

But you can still do all those things from the book. Don't do the things you don't want to do.

Comment by harrall 3 days ago

Supposedly only ~10-15% of adults use DoorDash and Instacart in the US.

In 2026, most people don’t use technology to buy groceries or order food. Those people are a minority.

Comment by asdff 3 days ago

The people using it probably assume everyone else is also using it all the time. Probably explains the memes you see about it online. I discovered after installing my doorbell camera one of my neighbors gets door dash virtually every single dinner. I wonder if they cook for themselves at all.

Comment by tyrust 3 days ago

I didn't know the number was so low. That's nice to know.

Comment by artisinal 3 days ago

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.

Comment by paradox460 3 days ago

An egg beater is a manually operated mixer. Typically a crank connects to a large gear, and two smaller gears interface with it, operating two interlocking whisks.

You'd crack eggs into a bowl, stick the whisk in, and turn the crank. The end result was a homogenized mix of yolk and white, good for cooking with

https://i.imgur.com/3SmoqMv.jpeg

Comment by BatFastard 3 days ago

Is there not a way to flag something as an AI submission?

If NOT we need it! Really needs to happen behind the scenes or this will turn into AI talking to AI.

Comment by paradox460 19 hours ago

I assure you I'm not an AI

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

The move from “now you’ll be able to” to “now you’ll have to” is unfortunately often corporate-driven, and I wish it could be regulated somehow. I feel like we are all in some giant lab experiment, being coerced (can't quite say "forced") to use technology for things that are much better without technology, just so technology companies can thrive.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

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 retail somewhat, but I think it is holding on stronger than what I would have assumed in some cases.

Comment by 10729287 3 days ago

>your choices were basically pizza, subs or Chinese for that type of delivery

Aka the only food that's adapted to delivery, or almost.

Comment by srj 3 days ago

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.

Comment by endemic 3 days ago

"Please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping"

Comment by ViscountPenguin 3 days ago

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.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

USPS is run as a federally owned business. It was traditionally self sustained by postage fees not by taxes, but it is nice that it was from our country's earliest days, a key piece of infrastructure.

Nowadays mailing any letter is pretty rare as most people communicate via text, email, etc but it is still absolutely possible to do so.

And yes the red flag is to indicate a letter needs to be picked up for delivery.

Comment by rafabulsing 3 days ago

Hah, that's very interesting to learn. I've always thought the little flag was lifted by the mailman, so that the homeowner could tell from a distance that they got mail. Cool that it's actually the other way around.

Comment by xeromal 3 days ago

I think that's mainly because the mailman might not notice that the mail in your box is not your mail being left over from when he dropped it off the day before. The flag lets him know what's remaining in the box is to be delivered. He could read the addresses but they have very busy routes!

Comment by rafabulsing 3 days ago

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!

Comment by adestefan 3 days ago

The Postal Service is one of the few entities directly authorized by the US Constitution. From Article 1, Section 8:

> The Congress shall have Power… To establish Post Offices and post Roads

With that one of the hallmarks of the USPS is they really strive to service every person in the country no matter how remote.

The fact they’ve turned it into a “business” and not a public good is really a tragedy.

Comment by tsm 3 days ago

> which is why they have the little red thing on their mailboxes

Yes.

One of my surprises when moving from the US to the UK were that I couldn't mail a letter from my house (and also how expensive the postage is!)

Comment by insane_dreamer 3 days ago

Nowadays the USPS is basically a spam delivery service. 95% of the “mail” I receive goes directly in the trash

Comment by cyanregiment 3 days ago

> your choices were basically pizza, subs or Chinese

Subs blew my mind because for almost all my childhood it was only pizza and Chinese.

I was at a friend's house and they got them for the whole family, couldn't believe it.

Then in cities, at first, it was like any ethnic food.

Then that crazy bastard started taking photos of people's menus.

Comment by jzebedee 3 days ago

> Then that crazy bastard started taking photos of people's menus.

I don't get the reference. Is this a startup origin story?

Comment by SoftTalker 4 days ago

This seems counter to my experience and memories. I'm old enough to remember the pre-VCR days so lived through the entire rise and fall of video rental. These stores were never a community gathering place or anywhere that you really met people. You'd go in, browse for a bit, pick a movie, pay and leave. This was the same at the locally owned shops and later when Blockbuster arrived and put all the local shops out of business.

I do think we've lost a lot of "civic life" in the past few decades but video rental stores aren't anything I remember fondly.

Comment by AngryData 3 days ago

Yeah I could see this idea with other small local community businesses, but the video store? Ive never seen or experienced it. People just want to go in, get their movie rental, and gtfo because they still gotta drive home afterwards to watch their movie.

Movie stores were even designed to move people through them as fast as possible too because the more people standing around clogging up the store, the less people that are coming in are going to be willing to browse movies and rent extras. There is a reason they didn't have benches or chairs for people to sit around on idly watching the movies they were playing on the walls.

Comment by nater5000 3 days ago

I think people forgot what the experience was actually like and are just recalling commercials where the experience was obviously over romanticized. If Wal-Mart went away today, you'd have people a decade from now reminiscing about how great going to Wal-Mart was and how sad it was we lost a "third place" when they went away.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

Nobody typically took a date to Walmart and Walmart employees were rarely the most knowledgeable about any of the million things they sell. Still, I have some nostalgia for the Walmarts of the 90s. I remember being mesmerized by Super Mario 64 demo in the electronics section for months before I finally got an N64 for Christmas. I remember playing arcades while my mom shopped. I remember reading magazines there I couldn't buy. I remember staring at the fish tanks, playing with the loose hula hoops, checking out the latest super soaker designs, having a meal at the cafe (later replaced with a McDonalds) with my grandpa, etc.

Comment by BeetleB 4 days ago

Yeah - the article does over-glorify. I did frequent one rental store where I could chat with the person behind the counter about movies, but none of the others.

Comment by carabiner 3 days ago

Seriously. I just remember as a kid seeing my school bus driver browsing the adult video section. I'm sure he did not want to find "community" there.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by jasonfarnon 3 days ago

there's supposed to be a curtain to keep you nosy freakin kids from seeing us in there!

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

They weren't necessarily a place to meet people but they were definitely a nice place to visit after a date out or for a family to discuss and pick their entertainment for the weekend. Occasionally a passionate movie fan would encourage you to try a movie when they noticed you were glancing at the cover. Some of the staff members were actually knowledgeable and would discuss suggestions or favorites in detail.

I worked at a GameStop-like store for my first job. We had regulars come in to trade games all the time and they would chat it up with us (the clerks) for long periods of time about various games. It had a similar function. Across from us was the music store and their employees were generally quite passionate about music and loved to discuss it. Rarely did it create an enduring friendship but that kind of social interaction has declined for sure.

Comment by mturmon 3 days ago

On the other hand:

Vidiots: https://vidiotsfoundation.org/history-mission/

Video Journeys: https://conorholt.medium.com/video-store-interview-video-jou... (Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne)

Video Active: Down the street, they kept a stock popular with visual artists although reviews concentrate on other content (https://www.yelp.com/biz/video-active-los-angeles)

Video Archives: https://www.bbc.com/articles/c4g40ndzpe0o (Tarantino)

Comment by bananaflag 3 days ago

Same here.

Anyway I only went to movie rental stores during the brief two-year window in the mid-2000s between owning a DVD player (never had VCR, we were too poor) and having broadband internet so I could pirate movies.

Comment by Dumblydorr 3 days ago

“Never” is a bit presumptuous. Sure you didn’t use them that way, how do you know for sure others didn’t?

Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 3 days ago

Mine had a video game rental store next door (GameCrazy) where I met other gamers.

Comment by panzagl 4 days ago

Article should be titled 'The Lost Civic Life of Mom and Pop Stores'- no kid making $4.50 an hour is cultivating a third space atmosphere at Blockbuster, whereas any Mom and Pop place can do that, no matter what they sell.

Comment by steveBK123 4 days ago

I was thinking about the loss of local shops a lot recently. There's definitely a confluence of factors at play, and it's not just price economics vs online & big box.

One thing I think is that theres just never enough time. Everyone is so over-scheduled. The white collar work day really has expanded vs what I remember my dad doing 30-40 years ago. There's more two income households than in the past. Parenting is far more active for both parents than it's ever been, and kids are being shuttled between events all weekend.

Most local shops are not open past 5pm or at best 6pm, and often closed Sunday. Who is off work by then to stop by?

Easier to click buy on amazon, and stop by the big box store after dinner Saturday open til 9pm for anything you need sooner.

Comment by inigyou 3 days ago

It's rent. We are all working so hard to pay the rent. Which always expands to take any money available and then some. It's stack-ranking us on working hours.

Comment by bix6 4 days ago

Was just talking with an older colleague about this. Work used to end Friday afternoon. The amount of emails I get (and send) over the weekend means there is truly never any off time.

Comment by liveoneggs 4 days ago

reading and responding to those on the weekend is your choice

Comment by afavour 4 days ago

It isn’t, really. If it’s the expected norm in your job then there’s a real chance you’ll lose your job if you don’t do it. And particularly the kind of jobs market we see today that’s a real risk.

Comment by SoftTalker 4 days ago

Actually not for most people. This is a peculiarity mostly of the tech industry. Most people don't read their work email after 5:00.

Comment by zbikowski 4 days ago

I'm not sure what authority you have on this subject, but anecdotally speaking as a non-software engineer who would lump himself with "most people," when it comes to white-collar work, I have noticed that all of my colleagues are, at the very least, expected to read email during time off (weekend or PTO) if not respond.

This applies to adjacent industries as well. I semi-regularly get email from firms (in the same time zone as mine) in the 11PM–2AM range.

Again, I'm not purporting to have any more experience than you do, but you can't assert that this is a tech-industry-only phenomenon when I am sure applicable examples other than my own could be found. I wish I could go without, but spending the first billable hour catching up on email is not really acceptable.

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

I think this varies widely across industries and jobs. You're both right. I've personally seen both types of jobs. I quit one and joined the other.

Comment by SoftTalker 3 days ago

Fair enough, I'm only speaking about the people I know and work with.

Comment by alex0015 3 days ago

In my experience in white-collar and tech jobs since 2019, nobody I've ever worked with has been expected to be reachable after hours. Same goes for my wife, all tech jobs as well. If someone messages me and I'm online, I'll answer, and it's about 50/50 that they say "Oh you didn't need to respond this late, just work on this tomorrow!"

Sample size of six jobs total, three per person.

Comment by bix6 3 days ago

No it’s not. Realtors respond after hours and weekends. Tradesmen as well. If you want to win business you have to be available when people reach out.

Comment by bix6 4 days ago

Yeah that’s a privileged point of view. You lose clients if you aren’t responsive enough.

Comment by blitzar 4 days ago

Yeah that’s a privileged point of view. You lose your job if you aren’t responsive enough.

Comment by toofy 3 days ago

the time thing rings very true to me as blocker.

when i get off work i would absolutely (and do) shop at stores that are open.

i stopped 90% of online shopping a couple years ago so once i regained the lay of the land of where to get what, shopping at mom and pop stores is tough since they seem to close right when everyone gets off work.

larger chain stores seem to keep longer hours so they get more of my business than i’d like. even then i’m still happier than when i bought everything online, no question about it.

Comment by threetonesun 4 days ago

I don't think that's really what we've lost. Blockbuster was a third space not because of its staff, but because it was a place you could say "meet me here" and hang out looking at movies with no (or very little) expected monetary output. Same as arcades in the mall, or cheap matinee movies. A better framing might be where would a teenager, today, say "meet me here" to their friends. I think you'll find there's many fewer around you today than there was 20 years ago.

Comment by everforward 4 days ago

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 veterans things and has board games and what not), at least a dozen other businesses that don’t care if you buy anything, and your usual litany of Walmart kind of places that can’t be bothered to track who is buying and who isn’t.

I don’t have any issues finding places to hang out for free, and I use them, but they’re pretty sparsely used so it’s not as 3rd space as it used to be.

Eg I walk my dogs most mornings, and I rarely see more than 1 other person at the park or dog park at 7 or 8am.

It feels to me like 3rd spaces are disappearing because people don’t use them, rather than people don’t use them because they don’t exist.

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

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

Comment by hdgvhicv 3 days ago

Depends entirely on your country. Your country may have that, but I don’t recognise that from any of the 4 libraries I’ve been to in the last 12 months or the additional 4 I’ve been to in the last few years.

Comment by nekusar 3 days ago

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'.

Comment by pimlottc 4 days ago

Definitely, and renting a video itself was often a communal activity. You'd be hanging out with your friends or family and get the hankering to see a movie, so you all pile in the car together and see what they had. You'd argue back and forth about this movie or that movie, and you had to be flexible since your first pick might not be in stock. Strangers would give you suggestions or you'd see what was recommended by the staff. Lots of times you'd end up taking up something completely different than what you had planned.

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

We are unfair to teenagers today; give them no place to go and then we feign surprise when they act up. According to Harper's, there's a 20% decline in kids playing baseball--their noses are in their iPads. You can't take children to the mall because malls are dying. Too many parks are places where bad things happen. I don't know what the solution is.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

Not only that, the tween years used to be when you developed the skills of independence that you'd hopefully more or less be able to use to be a teenager. A 9 or 10-year-old would have permission to walk or bike around the neighborhood, to and from school, maybe to a nearby shopping center or corner store... Today they're kept under lock and key for that whole time since we're afraid of having the cops called on us for "unsupervised children walking" by insane people. Teens don't even know how to bridge the gap between "fully chaperoned child" and "adult" so when they are unsupervised they get into trouble, and when they become adults they are so unconfident they do things like choosing college not because they have a passion for a subject, or for learning, or a career interest, but because when you're enrolled in college they arrange your life's schedule and assign you a living space without you having to handle any of the complexity yourself.

Great job, Gen-X parents.

Comment by saulpw 3 days ago

Hey, cut us some slack, we were raised by Boomers.

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

Scarily enough, I bet every generation since Gen-X has been largely raised by Boomers: Gen-X and Milennials largely had boomer parents. Many kids in the later generations are effectively being raised by their (Boomer) grandparents because their parents are either not involved or absent because working too hard.

For most of my 13 year old kid's friends, I only know their grandparents. Never see the actual parents.

Comment by saltcured 2 days ago

It's a lot more spread out than that since women have so many potential reproductive years.

There are families out there still with 18-20 year cycles and could pretty much tick off every generation.

And families like mine that more or less skip every other: Silent -> X -> Z -> ???.

Comment by AngryData 3 days ago

There are a lot of things we could do, but it would mean opposing governments penchant to have control and authority over average citizens. 50 years ago some teens run down the sidewalk being loud, maybe even shooting a bottle rocket or two being a nuisance, what happens? 99% of the time nothing at all, once in awhile a cop might see them and give them a stern warning to be good, and honestly even if they wanted to try and bring charges most courts would have thrown them out if they didn't hurt anybody or break anything because what authority do they have to say kids can't be loud and annoying? Now what happens today if some teens are being loud going down the sidewalk and shoot off a single bottle rocket or just smack a trashcan too loud? Cops get called, kids are forced to submit and half the time handcuffed, somebody gets charged with a crime whether it is a minor for "resisting" by trying to run when they saw a cop coming, having a "dangerous" explosive of a bottle rocket, or a vape, or maybe the parents for being "negligent" for letting their minor run around in public unsupervised or "abuse" for telling their kid to go outside unsupervised. Best case they spend thousands on a lawyer and get the case dismissed, or if they can't afford a lawyer get thousands in fines and fees plus a criminal record.

Comment by jimbob45 3 days ago

Unpopular opinion: baseball is not fun at all to play in organized leagues for children. Baseball is, however, the best pick-up game to play with ten friends, house rules, and improvised equipment.

It's like how Twister is super fun to play with your friends casually but how you'd never want to play in an organized Twister league.

Comment by triceratops 4 days ago

Malls still exist. As do public libraries, community rec centers, gyms, and pools.

Comment by threetonesun 4 days ago

Malls barely exist, at least compared to the way they did 20 years ago. I wasn't arguing all third spaces are gone, but even of the ones you did note I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period.

Comment by triceratops 4 days ago

> Malls barely exist, at least compared to the way they did 20 years ago

Presumably because people spend less money there than they used to.

> I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period.

It's one of the tragedies of our age. The inability to fund anything for the common good.

Comment by autoexec 4 days ago

Malls have been in decline for decades. Public pools barely exist anymore either. (https://www.poolmagazine.com/pool-news/america-is-losing-pub...). If you're in a wealthy city you probably still have a decent community center. Libraries are probably the most common space avilable, but they are also under constant attack by republicans. In wealthy cities you can find all kinds of services there. Smaller libraries will have some areas for reading and meeting.

Comment by triceratops 4 days ago

> Malls have been in decline for decades

People voted with their wallets.

> public libraries are under constant attack by republicans

Voters get the services they vote for.

All of us are to blame.

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

True but not very constructive.

Comment by triceratops 4 days ago

Pointing out the cause of the problem is not constructive?

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

What’s actionable about “it’s everyone’s fault”?

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

If I'm having a problem with a server and you commented "Former sysadmin was dumb and lazy, so they misconfigured it" (and you're correct) is that constructive?

I think we mostly all agree that we as a society caused the problem, but we can't go back and undo that. Constructive would be coming up with ways we can, given the past did take place, improve things going forward.

Comment by triceratops 4 days ago

I disagree with your analogy. I'm pointing out specific mistakes in the former sysadmin's misconfiguration. And also that the misconfiguration can be rolled back.

We can vote for politicians that fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. We can congregate more in the malls and community centers and bowling alleys (and churches too, if that's your style), that we still have. The loss of community isn't irreversible. Yet.

Comment by autoexec 4 days ago

> We can vote for politicians that fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare.

Putting aside the increasing efforts to limit our ability to vote for change, we have to fight against very well funded campaigns trying to convince people that we shouldn't fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. There's a lot money and power being used to encourage people to be more isolated as well. The public is growing less educated and more fearful. People have fewer friends, fewer social skills, and historically high levels of anxiety and depression.

While there may still be places to go, the ones that don't cost money are going away or at risk, and the problem goes deeper than access to physical spaces. Some things will have to change before we can expect people to really take advantage of what spaces we have left.

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

Much better!

Comment by autoexec 4 days ago

> Voters get the services they vote for.

It's hard to feel bad about a small backwoods town of idiots who vote to shut down their public libraries (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ban-lgbtq-jamestown-michig...) but there are efforts on the federal level too (https://www.ala.org/faq-executive-order-targeting-imls). Right wing nutjobs all over the country have been threatening library staff and calling in bomb threats and we can't vote them out

Comment by tayo42 3 days ago

Where do you all live?

I guess California is pretty nice and I don't appreciate this all enough lol

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

Malls are dying. Many are closed. Public libraries are daycare for the homeless and parents are afraid to leave their children. Your other options may be well-run, but all suffer from a lack of funding and staffing. Pools aren't a year-round thing, even in the South.

Comment by msisk6 4 days ago

Whenever I see these sorts of stories I think about the civic life we're missing out on by not socially gathering with our neighbors to hunt down woolly mammoths with sharp sticks so we don't all collectively starve to death.

The way things are going maybe we'll get back to those wonderful days. ;)

Comment by bix6 4 days ago

Sounds a lot more fun to me than sitting in front of a computer all day.

Comment by Cthulhu_ 4 days ago

Availability and legality of wooly mammoths aside, what's stopping you? Pointy stick hunting sounds like a great weekend activity.

Comment by criddell 4 days ago

A bunch of families in the town I grew up in bought a fairly large cabin together in northern Ontario they just called "the hunting camp". My family wasn't involved but I got to go up there quite a few times as a guest of my friends.

In theory, the adults were hunting or fishing (although not with pointy sticks). In reality they were smoking, drinking, playing cards, screwing around on the little boat and atvs that were there (three wheelers!), and telling lies around a campfire. Us kids were pretty much on our own the entire time. We too were smoking, drinking, and screwing around on the boat and atvs.

So I agree with you- pointy stick hunting is a great weekend activity.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

God, that sounds like absolute paradise. Either as a kid or a grown-up.

Comment by criddell 4 days ago

It was great except for the insects and lack of showers.

So many bug bites.

Comment by AngryData 3 days ago

The only non-bar place with an social atmosphere that I even know of anymore is one town nearby has a hardware store that has the old family line running it that the father and grandfather can sit around shooting the shit in it as a semi-job as they let their kids manage and operate it. And so a lot of other grey beards like to hang around for awhile when they go to pick up a can of 3-in-1 oil or a can of paint because they have known these people for 60+ years. They did have to move to a more prime location in town as the town shrank over the decades, and they also added a gun/sportings good section, and then one son learned gunsmithing to make its otherwise limited size and selection more useful.

But that is certainly not the norm, im not sure if I could find another hardware store like it within 100 miles. The social atmosphere probably barely manages to bring in the extra business needed to maintain it and it took 3 consecutive generations working well enough together and towards their customers to never break the strong community bond.

Comment by pimlottc 4 days ago

Places don't need to be curated to have value as civic spaces, although it certainly helps. Seniors hang out at the local McDonalds, car modding enthusiasts gather in strip mall parking lots, singles meet at the dog park...

Any place you have to physically go to provides a chance for social interaction. To debate your friends over what movie to pick, to comment on your neighbor's selections, to ask a clerk for a recommendation. Are these pretty slight? Sure, but life is made fuller by these minor brushes, and you never know which ones will unexpectedly bloom into something more.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

I made $6 an hour working at a video game store in the early 00s and most of our employees would chat it up with other gamers all the time. We had lots of regulars.

Comment by balderdash 3 days ago

100% I miss my local pharmacy. Knew the family that owned it and worked there (not well but enough to say hello), really enjoyed occasionally having breakfast as the lunch counter on a Saturday morning. So much better than going to cvs or Walgreens etc.

Comment by liveoneggs 4 days ago

half the article is nostalgia for the blockbuster job

Comment by ynac 3 days ago

I didn't get there on my last visit, but https://www.casafilmbar.com is apparently doubling up on their 3rd place karma by combining a bar with video rental.

I've been thinking about offering free videos in town somehow. Taking my collection of various movie media. Anyone have something like this? Like a free library for film, or a corner of someone's storefront?

[EDIT]

Can't not mention https://scarecrowvideo.org if we're talking video rental survivors.

Comment by KingFelix 3 days ago

Casa video is awesome!! Its been around for ages, so rad to go see it today, its full of DVDs, lots of people playing games and watching movies. Def need some more places like this - Would be cool to do the library version for films, also worked at blockbuster, people would ask me what they should watch and i would get them some solid movies

Comment by bix6 4 days ago

More housing and fewer spaces for gathering seems to be the trend. Any open space near me became condos or protected habitat space (can’t even walk in because people trash it). There are practically no town squares. Parks are all gated by HOAs. Even the beach is encroached on by housing which means there isn’t enough parking. Where are people supposed to gather now and just enjoy the day? I see libraries, coffee shops, bars, parks, and beaches as the main zones. Not bad but there aren’t enough (or enough time to enjoy them).

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

Libraries are daycare for the homeless. At one city's public library, one of the librarians was mopping up vomit and was heard to comment, "I didn't go to library school for this." Washrooms double as a place to shower, reading rooms a place to sleep.

Comment by tomjakubowski 4 days ago

Somewhat to my surprise, given its proximity to skid row and downtown's general trend since Covid, in my experience the LA Central Library usually has few visibly homeless people inside. I work remotely and live nearby and walk there every now and then to work outside the home. Almost everyone I see hanging out in the study table areas seem to be students or remote workers. The few homeless people I have seen at the library keep to themselves and often are reading quietly like any other patron.

Comment by jdkee 3 days ago

It doesn't have to be that way. It is a policy choice in some communities.

Comment by calvinmorrison 4 days ago

libraries are also just daycares for... kids. My library (which is on my block) is only open a few hours week in which gainfully employed adults would be able to go. The rest is geared to grannies and kids

Comment by tartoran 4 days ago

I think it's great for kids to grow up amongst books. As for the homeless, it's fine if they don't stink and use the library for what it is, a place to read books or possibly go online. Any other behavior should not be tolerated.

Comment by tomjakubowski 4 days ago

It grinds my gears a bit when "works 9-5 in an office" is equated with "gainfully employed". There are lots of working people who have free time during these hours: restaurant and retail workers, hospital nurses and doctors, firefighters and EMTs, artists and artisans, YouTubers and professional HN posters, actors and circus performers, authors and architects, homemakers and remote office workers, and so on.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

> professional HN posters

Wait, is this a career option I should have been aspiring to? I wonder if it's too late...

Comment by calvinmorrison 4 days ago

i am sorry that it bothers you

Comment by 4 days ago

Comment by jimbokun 4 days ago

That is a very good thing.

Kids desperately need third spaces too.

Comment by Izkata 4 days ago

> There are practically no town squares.

In the mid-2000s, my hometown decided to build a town square. They put it at the edge of town next to the train station, where it would look nice for commuters but not where people lived so it was always empty.

Comment by cucumber3732842 4 days ago

>Parks are all gated by HOAs

The near universal proliferation of owner's associations and management groups and whatnot is something you can lay square at the feet of the environmentalists.

Some big commercial developer developing a subdivision in 1970 would've allocated a couple lots as a park owned by the city or town. I live in a neighborhood like this.

Now those empty lots and the exact layout of plantings on them are a key part of the green space on the site plan that makes the bullshit spreadsheet math that is required for your stormwater or environmental math to pass requirements. And and some legal entity has to be responsible for that in perpetuity. Enter the HOA. And of course then they make all this stuff private because they can market the units in the development better that way.

Comment by SoftTalker 4 days ago

> a couple lots as a park

This was exactly the subdivision I grew up in. The "park" was just a few vacant lots in the middle of the neighborhood. That's all it was for years, eventually the city put in a shelterhouse and a couple of picnic tables, a basketball court, and a baseball diamond.

Comment by gib444 3 days ago

My local library is ruined by people being anti social on purpose not using headphones and playing loud music, and the staff not doing anything because they get accused of being racist.

If other visitors try to police it, which invariably escalates, the staff kick out the person trying to police it.

Comment by Taikonerd 4 days ago

So many people are nostalgic for these kind of interest-based stores that there's a whole subgenre of simulation games.

For video stores, there's Retro Rewind: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3552140/Retro_Rewind__Vid...

There are also games like that for trading-card stores, video arcades, and record stores.

(I'm probably going to buy the record store one, "Wax Heads." Being a music-genre nerd and recommending bands to people is a fantasy that I was born 10 years too late to do in real life.)

Comment by thebigspacefuck 4 days ago

It seems like the library has more movies than my local video store ever did at this point. But you can’t really talk there, and they don’t show movies on the screen. Maybe they should set up a separate section to give more of a 90s Blockbuster vibe with a dedicated movie librarian, that would be fun.

Comment by asdff 3 days ago

Libraries now are really cool with what they offer, if only at the main branch. Big city library system, your downtown central location probably has cool stuff like maker spaces and various workshops, classes, or groups.

Comment by criddell 4 days ago

That's a really good idea!

Comment by Grombobulous 3 days ago

I don’t agree at all that the video store was a third place unless you lived in the kind of small town where you knew everyone in town (and if you lived in a town like that, you pretty much automatically have more third place opportunities than suburban or urban dwellers).

I never had conversations with employees or patrons in the video store.

The time spent in that store was enjoyable enough but nothing to write home about. It was mostly a functional experience to get something to watch. You could even argue that it was a waste of your time on a Friday evening when you were ready to start your weekend.

Comment by wduquette 4 days ago

The loss of 3rd places is a big deal; but it seems weird to wax nostalgic over the remarkably brief period that movie rental stores were actually a thing. Blockbuster Video opened in 1985, was overtaken by Netflix starting in 2000, and died in 2010. There were small movie rental shops prior to 1985, but not long prior.

Comment by jimt1234 3 days ago

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 focused more on recording ("I can record my shows and watch them when it's convenient for me!" was a revolutionary concept at the time.) than renting. Once the rental market became a thing, a few local chains popped up. Then the rental market exploded and Blockbuster basically took over the world. They destroyed the local chains. They also sucked the life out of video rental - long lines, poor selection, annoying fees, unknowledgable staff, etc. I really think people are using "rose colored glasses" when they recall the Blockbuster days; it was definitely not all good.

The only experience I can recall that matches the article is after Blockbuster took over the video rental world, there were a few local rental places that focused on the love of movies, with a diverse selection and knowledgable staff. These places probably paid the rent with porn rentals, usually in an adjoining room, but the love of movies was always palpable. It was a lot like the article describes. I remember going to one in the early-2000s and renting the original Frankenstein movie (the one with Boris Karloff), something Blockbuster would never stock, much less have staff that even knew there was an original movie. And, yeah, I remember talking to the clerk about it; he ran down the list of all the Frankenstein spin-off movies.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

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.

Comment by rdiddly 4 days ago

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.

Comment by buildsjets 4 days ago

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 videos from the warehouse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwFjw798mPI

And some period-era fanfic filmed in an IRL video rental store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiPC2pIJNzc

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

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.

Comment by reaperducer 4 days ago

Maybe I missed out on the phenomenon he's talking about.

You did. It was a fairly widespread thing.

Although "The video store was always just a means to an end for me" indicates that you excluded yourself from this, rather than missing out on it.

Comment by singingtoday 4 days ago

How did we exclude ourselves? I went to the store, I got cassettes, discussed it with the people I came with.

We do the exact same thing now except use a phone or tablet.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

I agree. Independent movie rental shops had a very long window of viability before Blockbuster expanded enough to threaten them, so there were a ton of places that had a better chance of having people who deliberately like working there, than your average corporate-owned retail store today.

Plus, pre-smartphone, most people (note: not saying all people) loved talking to other people, so even a movie store employee who wasn't a major film buff would be someone you could build up a rapport with just based on the fact that you're a regular who talks with them. My dad was that way with most of the staff at dozens of the small businesses in town, and even the 'corporate' places like McDonald's, etc.

Comment by brightball 4 days ago

I talk about this all the time. The experience of going with your friends to Blockbuster or similar, walking around, browsing everything, deciding what you were renting then grabbing pizza made for some pretty memorable weekends.

Just having everything listed on 50 different streaming platforms isn't the same experience. There are things we really lose with efficiency gains.

Comment by comrade1234 4 days ago

Just as long as you pretend to not notice your neighbor come out of the curtained room...

Comment by mirmor23 4 days ago

more romanticizing of the bygone era. late fees (due at midnight!), restocking fees, etc; some of these fees to the tune of a new dvd/vhs; good riddance.

Comment by ghaff 4 days ago

A bit cruel and there were probably some indie stores that were different but I remember video rentals as a place where you went in, grabbed a movie, and left.

Comment by mirmor23 4 days ago

the big city that i lived in back then only had blockbuster or hollywood so my comment was about them; besides indie video rentals didn't have those kind of fees so, i was not talking about them. besides why cruel? market dynamics change and many businesses just don't make it..

Comment by jjulius 4 days ago

Indie rental shops in many areas did, in fact, have those kinds of fees.

Comment by tartoran 4 days ago

> more romanticizing of the bygone era. late fees (due at midnight!), restocking fees, etc; some of these fees to the tune of a new dvd/vhs; good riddance

Well, they were a business after all. And what's being romanticised is the civic experience of that bygone era. The modern experience sucks. It is devoid of any real human interaction. That is highly missing part in the modern landscape and it will only get worse.

Comment by julienchastang 4 days ago

That's true and when the Netflix DVD service arrived, I thought it was really a situation where the consumer had finally won. (No late fees! Yay!). That said here in Boulder we had the Video Station which was a phenomenal place for browsing and discovery with a super knowledgeable staff especially for foreign and art house cinema. They survived for a surprisingly long time, but finally closed about ten years ago [0]. Not long ago, while cleaning out an old (manual transmission -- another artifact of a bygone era) car I found a Video Station receipt which I still have. Good times!

[0] https://www.dailycamera.com/2017/02/27/the-video-station-bou...

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

Coral Gables, Fla had Lion Video. If Blockbuster carried it, Lion didn't: instead it was art house films, foreign films and lots of Spanish-language titles impossible to find elsewhere. One day the owner died and...that was it.

Comment by calvinmorrison 4 days ago

Some things just need to survive the crash. We have THREE drive in movie theaters within an hour of here. All are doing well. One doesn't even have a digital projector, and they almost closed multiple times yes, but now there's a cult following around vintage flicks they play from horror to comedy. If you can survive long enough it seems like you can make it, if you work hard to build a social group around things like film or movies

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

Expensive motel rooms, a lack of housing and not renting rooms to teenagers or college students might have something to do with the continued longevity of this business. And don't forget that on weekends they become flea markets.

Comment by asdff 3 days ago

Fee culture was huge back in those times. Phone bill fees just as notorious. Cable bill back in late 90s probably the same nominally what they charge today, which means it was actually a huge chunk of change given inflation. Most all of the stuff in the video store (vhs, dvds, games if they had them) honestly was about the same nominal prices then and what you'd pay today for a new blu ray or game. $20/movie or $60/game thereabouts. Music too. That's why we had to pirate.

Comment by billfor 4 days ago

You forgot the $2 charge for rewinding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97bkACYWLY

Comment by jjulius 4 days ago

Every era can be romanticized, and every era has its downsides. Just today, I could ramble on about the ever-increasing costs of streaming services as they reduce their available catalogs, ads forced upon users who have purchased the "ad-free" streaming bundle, UI/UX patterns designed to make cancelling difficult, things you've "purchased" no longer being available to you because the service no longer carries that studio's titles, paying up to $24.99 to "rent" a movie on Amazon for a mere 48 hours, the endless cycle of a service starting out "great" only to be enshittified, etc.

Comment by mirmor23 4 days ago

you are right, but that does not negate the friction that people felt at the time. my experience is with netflix, and i never found issues canceling, and as a matter of principle, i do not subscribe to services unless there are no alternatives (e.g. i pay for amz shipping, my own email domain). compare canceling a service sitting at home to driving to the video store, depositing dvd/vhs, and still having to check if they 'accidentally' overcharged. today it's so simple afaict.

Comment by stuart78 3 days ago

I worked in a small, independent video store in my town during college. It was the only place locally where you could get art house, a wide selection of classic movies and other odd-ball tapes. During my time, there was a fair bit of the 'helpful advice' this article focuses on, but I think the bigger loss is due to licensing.

At Morris Video, our tapes were available as long as they played (we never switched to DVD). There was no option for the distributor to pull inventory and there were no contracts between Morris and the studios. We bought the tapes for a fixed fee, we rented the tapes as long as we could.

The result was a library that included material that was (at the time) impossible to access anywhere else in town, and that could survive the collapse, acquisition or whims of Hollywood distributors.

Today, the studios can and do change the content of films you have 'purchased' digitally (The French Connection is the best recent example) and our access to the material is governed by some impenetrable and revokable contract, and the catalogs on offer pale in comparison to Morris if you're looking for older outside of the mainstream.

There are benefits to the new mode for sure: Radically lower barrier to entry for independent creators, instant access to quite large libraries, lower priced films than peak physical media.

I don't really want to go back to having a huge wall of DVDs or tapes, but I would prefer to live in the world of simpler licensing and ownership.

Comment by donatj 3 days ago

There is a space in my town that has sat empty for many years now. Well over a decade. It used to be a video rental place. I don't know if anything's been in there since.

I've kind of half joked with my wife about the idea of opening a modern video rental place there. We both lament the loss of a place or you could go and chit chat about movies.

The common refrain is "no one even owns DVD players anymore" to which I say "we'd rent them out too, for a couple dollars a night". I'm sure if I went around garage sales one weekend I could get a stack of them.

My wife's idea is to have a number of rooms people could rent for a couple hours for viewing movies in spaces done up in the style of various eras TV rooms.

It's kind of depressing just how hard it's become to even try to connect with people through modern media. It's so disposable. I try to talk to my friends about music for instance and the refrain is basically "I don't know, I just put Spotify on". Basically no one's heard of let alone seen most of the shows I watch, nor I theirs.

The modern world is a weirdly lonely existence.

Comment by fsuts 3 days ago

> I've kind of half joked with my wife about the idea of opening a modern video rental place there. We both lament the loss of a place or you could go and chit chat about movies.

South Park did an episode where Randy Marsh does this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_FaceTime

Comment by mvdwoord 3 days ago

We used to have what I think must be one of the last video rental places in The Netherlands around the corner from me. For some reason that always sparked a little nostalgia in me when walking past. The owner owned the building outright and lived above the shop... in one of those Ye Olde Shopping streets in NL. He still had some customers as there were plenty of senior citizens which happily went to him on a Friday to pick out a movie to watch in the weekend. I don't think he made any money in those last 10 years or so, and it was very often closed at random, but as he lived above and owned the building outright I do not think he cared in any way. The owner passed away two years ago or so... and now it is some mortgage shop.

Comment by firesteelrain 3 days ago

I don’t agree with the premise of the article as the video store as a social area. We would go to the movie/video game store nearly every Friday and Saturday in the 80s and early 90s. It was transactional. It wasn’t social - maybe this was regional.

Comment by BrenBarn 3 days ago

I could write a really long thing here about my thoughts on video shops. Suffice it to say that there was a video shop in my town that I went to a lot as a kid, and continued to go to occasionally during college and into my late 20s. The shop had opened in 1979 and stayed in business until 2018 --- an astonishing run that spanned essentially the entire era in which renting movies from a brick-and-mortar store was a thing. At the time its impending closure was announced, I hadn't been in for several years, and I still deeply regret not patronizing it more while it still existed.

Comment by redwood 4 days ago

Forever memorialized in Kevin Smith's Clerks

Comment by gwbas1c 3 days ago

Where were these "3rd place" video rental shops? By the mis 1990s Blockbuster pushed everyone out in my town! The selection was limited, the staff rude, ect, ect. I switched to Netflix (DVD by mail) because it had a much better selection.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

> 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 of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date. Much like dining out in a sit-down restaurant. Yet the expectation is that you sit in silence for 2 hours and spend maybe 5-10 minutes critiquing or raving as you walk out.

But now I'm wondering if the custom of doing this together is a vestigial one, formed in a time when the 'going to the cinema' was a more social event even as late as the drive-in era (I have never experienced a drive-in).

Comment by mcphage 4 days ago

> I've been kind of puzzled, since the first time I gave it any thought, why "going to a movie" is culturally thought of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date.

Because after going to the movie, you've all seen it, and so can talk about it with each other.

> spend maybe 5-10 minutes critiquing or raving as you walk out.

It's not just for that trip, but it'll be a shared touchpoint. And if it's something you really enjoyed, it's something you'll be able to talk about together for years—like going to see Star Wars as a kid.

Comment by jerlam 3 days ago

This is also how run clubs, church groups, dinner parties, and a lot of other activities actually work. The specified activity is followed by unstructured hanging out where you're expected to be open and present.

But a lot of people view these activities as the objective itself (like work) and leave immediately, losing out on the social activity.

Comment by ghaff 4 days ago

>why "going to a movie" is culturally thought of as an activity one does with a companion, even a date. Much like dining out in a sit-down restaurant.

Let me unpack a little bit.

I very rarely go to movies and really haven't for years. So it isn't a social activity so mostly won't except for the odd shoe in IMAX.

I will go see live theatre with someone or maybe a group. But am also perfectly happy to do so on my own.

As to meals? I'm so inured to solo meals with business travel I don't think twice. Enjoy eating with friend(s) whether in a business or purely social context. But it's not like I'm going to order room service or go to McDonalds if I don't have anyone to sit with.

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

Yeah, I've reversed course on both those things now. I literally just tell my spouse, "I think tonight at 8 I'm going to go see Project Hail Mary" since I'm the only one interested in that kind of movie. And dine wherever I want when I'm alone.

I think it was a lot harder when I was 18 because I saw being alone as a reflection on my worth as a person.

Comment by ghaff 4 days ago

I was on the college's film committee and I often enjoyed hanging out with some of the other members on a weekend night especially if I didn't have anything else going on or it was later. (We also pre-screened all of our films in case there a problem with the print. So I did that too sometimes.) I was also fine, if I had a free afternoon with going to one of the discount theaters in town if there was something I wanted to see.

But, yeah, looking back I think I was a lot less inclined to just eat by myself in a restaurant--partially because I could often rope someone else in or would know people if I went into a dining hall and partly because I wasn't accustomed to just having a meal without anyone else around.

Comment by AngryData 3 days ago

I always recommend people to go to a theater themselves, it is really an enjoyable time. Some people act like you are crazy when they hear about it, but everybody already watches tv shows or movies by themselves.

Comment by ghaff 3 days ago

I'd probably do it more if it were a convenient walk down the street but the nearest decent movie theater is probably an hour round-trip between driving and parking. The setup I have at home is good enough and I have access to more than enough media even if not always the latest and greatest.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

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.

Comment by teunispeters 3 days ago

One of the interesting things of living in Saskatchewan is that due to large portions of the province being offline, video movie rental is still very much alive here, as is videogame rental and other rental formats.

Comment by dncbfwa 3 days ago

https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/mainstreet/ -- "An oral-historical exploration of the last video store in Moscow, Idaho, featuring interviews with former staff, customers, board members, and owners of the Main Street Video Co-Op and Howard Hughes Video."

Comment by ubermonkey 3 days ago

My own gripe is that, at least in a good-sized city, the late "physical rental" era provided a more complete menu of available films for the consumer.

Now things flutter in and out of availability, and are fragmented between countless different services. In 1999, though, a visit to Blockbuster and/or my well-stocked film-geek local store would get me pretty much anything I wanted to watch.

Comment by abhayb 4 days ago

I used to live under the guy that ran Lost Weekend on Valencia street. Held out till like 2014/2015. At the time I wasn't really sad about it but now I wish it was still around

Comment by xp84 4 days ago

I remember when they opened the Alamo Drafthouse they had a semi-permanent outpost of Lost Weekend included in the lobby area. I wonder if it's on the Killed By Covid And Never Came Back list.

Comment by petercooper 4 days ago

Shopping with my kids I noticed we kinda have a replacement here in the UK in the shape of HMV (originally a spin off of His Master's Voice). When I was a kid it was mostly a record store, but now it's focused on what I'd call geek/"fandom" tat: posters, figurines, comics, band merch, etc. Whenever I'm dragged into one, it's always full of geek/fandom types hanging out.

Comment by deeg 3 days ago

This has been going on for a while, hasn't it? Radio shows, and then the TV. People could begin to entertain themselves without going out. My grandfather talks about how his father and mother went out dancing every week. It's probably an exaggeration brought on by fading memories but we don't to seem to have that as much any more.

Comment by feoren 3 days ago

I used to go out dancing 4 nights per week. I had to stop because I had kids, but there are still thriving dance places around. It's still very possible if you live in a big city. I highly recommend trying it.

Comment by paradox460 3 days ago

What's interesting to me is that most of the big chains have died. Blockbuster, Hollywood, and even Redbox. But small single stores and local chains continue to exist.

My hometown of Los Alamos has a video store called Film Festival. It's still in business, still renting tapes, DVDs, etc. When I went back to visit a few years ago I was amazed

Comment by kkylin 4 days ago

Where I live we still have a locally owned video rental store, though several years ago they put in a bar and now it's more a bar with a video section than a video store where you can get beer and watch movies. We do still rent when there's something we can't stream on one of the services we pay for; I much rather do that than give more $ to Amazon and the like.

Comment by pseingatl 4 days ago

It's weird when shops pivot. There was a record store in a neighboring village that went from vinyl to video game kiosks. Then the record store that became a candy store. Put couches in bookstores and people stop buying books. I guess they figure the rent is paid by benefactors. Then again, Barnes & Noble seems to have a partnership with Starbucks...

Comment by golemotron 4 days ago

I wonder when we'll see articles on the lost civic life of social media? With increasing AI use, it is happening.

Comment by tripleee 4 days ago

that already happened. The early days of Facebook as a user were much different than what they became later on.

Comment by reaperducer 4 days ago

The early days of Facebook as a user were much different than what they became later on.

Facebook jumped the shark when it eliminated customization and forced everyone to have the same personal page.

"Pieces of Flair" and a thousand other ways to express yourself were extinguished, along with any actual "social" aspects of Facebook.

Comment by buildsjets 4 days ago

Facebook jumped the shark the instant they allowed non-.edu email domains to sign up.

Comment by Izkata 4 days ago

And Network pages which you were automatically included in based on your .edu domain, designed to facilitate real-world activities at that location.

Comment by blitzar 4 days ago

early instagram vs influencer instagram ... early twitter vs whatever that shit is now ... the list is long ...

you either disappear like tumblr or you stay up long enough to turn into a dumpster fire.

Comment by ghaff 4 days ago

I used to do a lot of chit-chat with folks I knew on Twitter during the work day. After Musk largely torched it and a lot of people just decided they didn't need that kind of social media any longer, that channel largely went away. I use Facebook some but not the same and LinkedIn even less so.

Comment by agentultra 3 days ago

This brings me back. I got to work at a movie store for a while. Great times. Almost like Empire Records.

Comment by kstenerud 4 days ago

> 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...

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

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.

Comment by 4 days ago

Comment by gib444 3 days ago

Yeah I feel like that's just a scenario that was depicted in movies/tv shows

Comment by Podrod 3 days ago

My city still has a video rental store. They've been going for quite some time

https://20thcenturyflicks.co.uk/

Comment by cube00 4 days ago

This must be from a different era. In the 90s, people at our store used to stare at the shelves in silence. You certainly weren't striking up conversation with strangers there.

The screaming and explosions from the movie trailers playing full blast on a non-stop loop throughout the store over the PA didn't help.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

Occasionally it would happen. It definitely wouldn't happen every time you went in. But I do remember going in with my brother and sister and parents and haggling over what 2 movies we were going to rent for that weekend. That in and of itself was a lesson in negotiation and was part of the fun of the whole thing.

Comment by Tagbert 4 days ago

we would ask recommendations and discuss experiences of watching various movies with strangers or with people we regularly saw at the video store

Comment by singingtoday 4 days ago

That was my experience, and in the 90s as well.

Comment by deadbabe 4 days ago

Someone should make a coffee shop that is also like an old school rental place that has a few CRT TVs with VCRs around and people can take movies down from some shelf and pop them in and watch them on a communal couch. Very third place.

Comment by mcphage 4 days ago

For the Modern American version of that—last time I was in an Urgent Care, they had a tv playing one of the Sharknado movies. The security guard there was excited to show everyone the bit where he was an extra in the film.

Comment by dexterdog 4 days ago

I hope he had a license to be broadcasting that publicly. I wish I were being sarcastic about this.

Comment by littlexsparkee 3 days ago

There's still one in SF (VideoWave), carries lots of foreign film & Criterion Collection incl. blu-ray/4K.

Comment by pixel_popping 4 days ago

I admit it, I've never returned that DVD, found it behind a couch years later, only told my mom a decade later.

Comment by chrisco255 3 days ago

Probably set her back $75 for not returning it.

Comment by evereverever 3 days ago

My hometown had an independent video rental store called "Video Rentals".

The 1980s were a simpler time.

Comment by trencedamp 3 days ago

> Consider the English pub, the French café, the German beer garden, or the American tavern

Tavern?

Comment by creamynebula 3 days ago

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.

Comment by seemaze 3 days ago

Be kind, rewind.

Comment by gregrata 3 days ago

Yeah. Did the author actually go to these stores? I grew up in the 80's and 90's, went often, and did not have any of these experiences. Generally didn't have any conversations beyond checking out (and arguing about rewind fees)

I understand this is just subjective with a sample size of 1.

Anyone else find the same, or was it some kind of great movies social hub?

Comment by hallman76 4 days ago

Obligatory video from theonion: Blockbuster Offers Glimpse Of Movie Renting Past

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TrPwOrf4sM

"What's so poignant about this time is the uncertainty"

Comment by Upvoter33 3 days ago

Blockbusters were like the worst business ever and embodied enshittifying before the term existed. Once in a rare while there was a local video rental though that was cool. And the General point is true.

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Comment by awfawf 4 days ago

this article is trash. the "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" of someone who had a TV for parents.