Giving someone an experience can top a tangible gift. Here's something that's both: a trip to a 1990s-esque video store that includes renting some movies curated for your recipient.
Oh, wait. Video rental store stores don't exist anymore.
But some really cool ones still do, one of which is in downtown Bloomington. Vulture Video, at 120 E. Sixth St., offers more than 4,000 DVDs, 4K Blu-ray and VHS tapes for rent (and most likely a good deal more, according to staff). Walk in and step back a few decades. If you're post-Boomer, you might not even know what a video store is.
Plus, physical stores provide community. Browsers come in for a 4K Blu-ray and might start talking with a bunch of other people about "One Cut of the Dead" or "The Elephant Man."
A flock of Vulture volunteers runs the store, owned by head volunteer, Dave Walter, who works as a videographer and editor and is a producer at CATS (Monroe County's Community Access Television Services).
DVDs aren't the only things Walter collects -- and in fact, much of the store's stock comes from his personal video stash -- at home, he has scads of books, comics, Japanese toys and "floating" fountain pens, too.
"I'm pathologically acquisitive," Walter said as he adjusted a dramatically decorated new-releases video box. (Streaming leaves out a film's informative and image-laden box, of course.)
"Some of our DVDs would cost $60 or more if you bought them," he said.
For those who remember Vulture as something different, until 2011 the space was a curio store, the Curiodrome, which carried art objects and other collectibles.
Alicia Kozma volunteers because she can't seem to get sated with film watching. Her paying job is director of the Indiana University Cinema (which is why she moved to Bloomington).
"Some college kids were getting tired of streaming movies," Kozma said. "We talked about what they were in the mood for. They rented three videos, and they've been coming back. We're a curatorial store. Ask someone and they'll help you find a video you might like."
Kozma's work has been published in many anthologies and journals, and she is affiliate faculty in IU's Media School among other things. Her Ph.D. is in communication and media studies from the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Vulture's customers vary. "They span the gap, from people just getting interested in movies to cinephiles," said volunteer Nick Romy, who also owns the guitar store Ardent Instruments. Why do they volunteer for Vulture? "I'm a really big horror movie nerd." Also, they grew up going to video stores and want them to stay around.
Romy pulled open a heavy metal drawer to show where the discs live, since the artful boxes on the display shelves are empty. "If you don't see a certain movie, just ask us," they said.
Romy recalls one customer, engrossed by the myriad information and art of the video boxes, which you don't get when you stream, stood for an hour one day just reading the boxes. By the way, with rentals, you also get bonus and special features unavailable when streaming.
Romy is a Bloomington native and alumnus of the IU Jacobs School of Music and attended the Chicago School of Guitar Making and relocated to Chicago to work at Specimen Products.
The store's fastest "sellers" are horror and occult videos.
"Any movie nerd would love to volunteer at a video store," Walter, the owner, said.
For a look into local video rental shops, watch "Mom n Pop," a documentary that digs in to the growth and then death of U.S. independent video stores, which boomed in the mid-1970s through the 1990s. "Mom n Pop" offers interviews with both filmmakers who did well in these stores and with video-store aficionados -- in the past and also today.
Vulture Video doesn't offer a lot of merch, even though Walter is a collector and owns plenty of stuff he could sell. And that might be a good thing. According to the thesystemsthinker.com, industry leaders wondered if video rentals were nosediving because of services such as pay-per-view. Bill Fields, the new CEO of Blockbuster at the time (1996), made the stores into "entertainment destinations," offering CDs, games, books, toys, games, food and other merchandise. But these add-ons diverted customers, as the company drifted away from its core business. People rented fewer videos than ever, and profits from the candy and books, etc., was small.
Vulture Video does offer a few items for sale such as hats, coupon books and T-shirts, but the focus is definitely finding their patrons an enthralling flick.
The store is open every day from 4 to 10 p.m. Memberships are free, and the cost is usually $3 per video, unless a payment plan is purchased; they have three options. Late fees apply usually after three days. The mail slot in the lower section of the front door can take returns.
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