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Do you remember those times when you wanted to watch a movie over the weekend, and you went to the video rental store to browse around for a while? To find just that perfect little gem of home evening entertainment? Nowadays, almost all those stores are gone from cities around the world. However, one store of what used to be one of the largest franchises for video rental still remains: the last Blockbuster.
Who still has a video player at home? Most of us went digital a long time ago. And franchises like Blockbuster have been replaced by Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, etc.
These digital video stores allow just as much browsing. Albeit not quite as tactile and without the social experience that used to go with it.
I don’t know about you, but my friends and I would stay a while in the store. Browse the forest of shelves. Meet other friends there.
We would show each other hidden treasures we found tucked away in dusty corners. We would reminisce about the movies we had already seen. And we’d get special tips from the store clerk who would know everything about movies.
Being in one of those video rental stores was a feeling akin to being in grandma’s attic, finding long-lost memories in boxes.
Then we would go home. Maybe discover that we had picked up a horribly old tape which would make the movie on screen look as if it was snowing. But horrible quality of tape or not, we would still have a blast.
In some of the larger cities, independent stores have opened for cineastes where, nowadays, you might find DVDs of rare movies. However, even these stores are few and far between.
The last Blockbuster.
This Blockbuster was opened by Ken Tisher in 1992 as the second location of Pacific Video, a small video rental store chain in Oregon. In 2000, Tisher converted it into a Blockbuster franchise store.
But Blockbuster LLC closed all their corporate-owned stores by early 2014.
This left the Bend location as one of 50 remaining franchise stores. As the digital world became more and more dominant, one after the other of these last video stores went out of business, too.
In July 2018, the Blockbuster in Bend became the last remaining Blockbuster in the United States.
Dish Network, the owner of the Blockbuster trademark, no longer grants new franchises with the Blockbuster name. This further cements the Bend store’s status as the very last Blockbuster.
Amazingly, Bend has become a popular tourist destination due to the constant flood of nostalgic movie afficionados who take a trip to Bend to remember the good old times…
When renting a movie was an event that included needing to leave the house to find that special treasure for the evening. Strolling instead of scrolling.
The owner of the Bend store continues to license the Blockbuster trademark from Dish Network on a yearly basis. This continues to allow his location to sell merchandise using the name.
The Bend store stocks around 1,200 titles. And has an estimated 4,000 members who still regularly rent movies there.
The sudden global interest brought a flood of new visitors to the unassuming little place 170 miles east of Portland. As well as a continuously rising number of mail and online orders.
Also, since the documentary aired on March 15, 2019, people from all over the world sent flowers or even called the store just to say “thank you” for staying open.
Even now, 2 ½ years after the movie was released on Netflix, staff members continue to be busy packaging thousands of online orders for Blockbuster T-shirts, hats, and face masks, which are all made by Bend businesses.
“It’s a little bit crazy, but it’s a very good thing,” store manager Sandi Harding told The Bulletin in Bend. “We’ll take a little crazy if it means keeping the store open.”
There is a bit of an irony here, too… considering that it was Netflix which helped make the last Blockbuster so very famous. When, after all, it was exactly streaming services like Netflix which led to the other 8’999 Blockbuster stores around the globe having to close their doors forever.
Interestingly, the documentary reveals that Blockbuster had an option to buy Netflix many years ago, when the company was still a mail-order DVD service and hadn’t transformed into the dominant streaming service it is now.
According to the documentary and previous online news reports, the video empire’s management at the time saw Netflix as a niche market with limited potential.
All that remains now, many years after their decision, is one little store: The Bend Blockbuster.
The growing number of followers of the one remaining store even did their best to help keep the store alive and kicking with mail orders during the Covid19 pandemic, when so many other small businesses had to close.
For those of us who are a little bit older, Blockbuster is a vital part of our childhood, of growing up, of having parties with friends, and moments with our families we’ll never forget.
Due to all the overwhelming support, the store managed to continue to operate without laying off staff during the pandemic.
According to Wikipedia, the store hosted sleepovers via Airbnb in September 2020. And a local brewery, 10 Barrel, just recently released a dark ale called The Last Blockbuster.
Official Website Bend Blockbuster
YouTube Trailer of the documentary feature The Last Blockbuster (2020):
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Liam Klenk was born in Central Europe and has since lived on four continents. Liam has always been engaged in creative pursuits, ranging from photography and graphic design, to writing short stories and poetry, to working in theatre and shows. In 2016, Liam published his first book and memoir, 'Paralian'.
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