When I Was Your Age … The Video Store

I have many fond memories of my pre-movie geek years as a kid, developing my movie knowledge base and slowly broadening my horizons… all without even knowing it would come into play later in life. As a kid, watching movies was just something fun that I enjoyed doing. I had no concept at the time there even was such a thing as a “movie geek”.

What I did know, was that I loved going to the local video store and browsing through literally thousands of titles, a vast array of options to entertain myself at home. As I developed my taste for movies, I amassed a sizable collection of video store memberships. Seriously, I could have justified a second wallet just for my membership cards. I loved the adventure of going out and trying to find cool movies I hadn’t seen, checking out different stores and talking with the people that ran the stores. One thing I quickly learned was that in those days, the small independent and family-owned stores often employed clerks who actually knew something about movies.

For me, one store managed to set itself apart from all the others… it was my favorite. That store was called Video Haven. I say “was” because, sadly, Video Haven went out of business a number of years ago. It was a sad departure and one that I still mourn. Video Haven was in Bridgeton, which is a suburb of Saint Louis in the county. Like many other small video stores, their downfall began slowly with the rise of Blockbuster Video, but the nail in the coffin was the  aggressive use of eminent domain in the expansion of the St. Louis-Lambert Field Airport. This did not directly wipe out the store, but it obliterated Video Haven’s core customers. With most of the residents of Bridgeton moving out of the area, Video Haven suffered huge drops in their customer base.

The layout of the store was part of it’s appeal. As you entered Video Haven, the door chime went off and the clerk was behind the counter, which stood directly down the main isle from the entrance. In this large entry isle, the family movies were shelved along the wall on the right and the newest releases were shelved on the left. At this point, I had to make a choice… turn right or turn left. If I turned to my left, I would be in their video game section consisting of two long isles filled on both sides, top to bottom, with virtually every game available from Nintendo, SNES and Sega. That’s all that was out back then, but it was so cool! Video Haven even rented out game systems and controllers.

If I turned to the right, I would enter the VHS rental mecca. (This, of course, was during the pre-DVD era.) The store presented itself like a labyrinth of motion picture goodness. Videos were categorized by genre [naturally] and alphabetized within those genres. Heck, they even had a few sub-genres separated out! On the shelves were Styrofoam-filled paper cases  so  that you could read about the movie. Below that was a plastic hook which held at least one small, red plastic circle tag. On these tags were the movies’ titles and  their ratings, along with ID numbers. The idea  to  choose you rental(s)  and take the tag(s) to the counter  where the clerk retrieves the video from the massive library in back. The beauty of this system was, if they had multiple copies of a movie they could simply put more than one tag on the hook, instead of taking up valuable shelf space with multiple copies of the same titles. This was crucial in the store’s ability to offer such a vast selection of titles. And that there was…

As I wandered through Video Haven, I would find myself in a  dark cave of  horror movies, or wander over here and find the elaborate classics section, or stroll over there and find the hall of drama and so on. They had a sports section, a documentary section, a  big extensive  sci-fi section [the owner’s son was a  Trekkie]  and a huge comedy section with the stand-up videos separated out into their own little category. They even had the new releases broken down into three categories… Newest, New and Nearly New. You could get different deals on the rentals depending on which category of “new” it was… like, rent two and get the third free, etc. Of course, you could also buy videos, both older ones and new releases. Video Haven even special ordered movies for customers, slamming a MASSIVE video catalogue on the counter and saying “if it’s in here, we can get it.” You can imagine the awe plastered on my face the first time I had that experience.

These are all  great examples  of why Video Haven was my favorite, and I believe the closest thing to a perfect video store. But, it was the less-tangible aspects of this store that really made me fall in love with it. The owners always had the store practically wallpapered in the coolest posters, stand-ups and various promotional displays hanging from the ceiling. They were always friendly and fun to chat with. They didn’t mind at all if you spent all day in their looking around, even if you didn’t end up renting… that rarely happened with me.

They  also allowed customers to place dibs on the promo displays, putting your name on it and when they were finished with it you could come and take it home… for free!!! I remember having a few, including an inflatable hanging display for Terry Gilliam’s ‘Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ and a box-like display for Stuart Gordon’s ‘Re-Animator’… and, I had tons of posters, most of which remained rolled up as I was still a kid  living at home and minimal space to hang them. I loved going in and checking the box they had with all their posters rolled up for the taking. They would write the title on the back corner so you didn’t have to unroll each and every one to find something you wanted.

I miss Video Haven immensely. Sure, I do love my Netflix subscription and think  the online gig is  definitely the future of rentals, moving rapidly towards a purely online distribution where the DVD itself will not even play into the game. However, there’s always going to be that part of me that misses the  adventure and wonder of physically browsing through the selection, having that tactile connection with the videos and being able to literally lose myself within the many maze-like isles of movie geek heaven… those were the days.