LogFAQs > #949687366

Maybe, but I think it's more nostalgia for my childhood. There was a Family Video near me that I visited a few times in the past five years and, while it was neat, it reminded me of a lot of the hassles of renting. I had to drive out there to return movies. The rental period was set up in such a way that you were guaranteed to either incur fees or have to make your way out there on a weird day.

Say I rented a five day movie on Saturday night. I would have to return that by Thursday night or get charged a late fee. This location was kind of far out, so that's like an hour of driving on a Thursday night to return a movie to avoid a late fee. So, most of the time, I'd just consider the late fee an extra convenience charge and take it back on a Friday or Saturday. I could tell the employees hated me for doing that though.

It's not like when I was a kid. In my hometown, the video stores were all in the center of town. I could rent something on the weekend and my grandmother would drop it off in the return slot when she went to get lunch on Mondays while I was at school. Same thing when I'd go visit my cousins who lived in a big city. They had Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and more. We'd load up on games and movies and then their mom would take them back after a week (or less in the case of some new titles) when she was out running errands.

Hell, I don't even particularly like renting from Red Box because it means I have to get my ass back out to a kiosk the next day. Sometimes it works out like, I'm out on the town on a Saturday night having fun, grab a movie, watch it, and then return it to the kiosk in the grocery store when I go shopping on Sunday. Covid has absolutely killed the first part of that though, so I rarely rent from Red Box anymore. I don't think you could return Blockbuster rentals to just any Blockbuster though, so that was probably even more inconvenient. We didn't have a Blockbuster in my town, only local video stores, so my only exposure to them was when I'd visit family.

The tl;dr is that I (and I suspect many people) don't necessarily miss the physical video store so much as that period of my life. When physical video stores were still commonplace, I was a kid/teenager with fewer worries and more hope for the future. Getting out of school on Friday and going to the video store to rent something (likely the same movie for the tenth time) was the highlight of the week/something I looked forward to immensely. As an adult, I just think about the hassle of it all and would rather rent something digitally.