Today I went to a Hollywood Video for the first time in at least two years. Since technology's gotten better at delivering streaming video or downloaded video, it just seemed like too much work to go to a video store. If I couldn't get it on Netflix, Netflix streaming, or certain illicit methods, I just didn't watch it. But today, we needed a movie for Jess to watch for a class tonight, and all of my legit and less legit methods failed. So, the video store.
Walking through those shelves of poorly-alphabetized DVDs was like going back in time. I got hit by little snippets of memory and blasts of nostalgia: renting R-rated foreign films as a teenager, hoping for nudity; running through the video store with Jess while we were in college, picking three dumb movies and watching all of them in a night; picking a movie with three or four friends, bickering and laughing until we settled on something we'd all seen before. Just being in there made me happy. I grabbed the movie we needed, chatted with the clerk, checked some release dates, and walked out.
There's something about that whole transaction that's inherently more satisfying for me than dowloading or streaming a movie. For one thing, there's a finite set of films in a video store. Sometimes, limited selection is the only thing that gets me moving -- usually, Jess and I decide to watch a movie, then we spend an hour looking through Netflix's streaming selections, and then it's too late to watch a movie.
So a limited selection actually helps, and so does the physical arrangement of movies on a shelf. The DVD art can catch your attention, make you pause and consider something you might not have heard of. You can also just wander the aisles, just browsing, letting your eyes fall where they may, surrounded by hundreds of DVDs just waiting to entertain you.
Sure, I can browse movies online, and can even see tiny pictures of the box cover. But it hits my eyes the same way all information does these days -- with me sitting on my ass, perched over my laptop or lounging in front of the desktop computer. That time spent doing a physical version of something I usually do online, and how happy the simple chore made me, illustrated that my other four senses are starving for input.
Maybe we need some physical transactions and human interactions in the world, after all. Maybe it's not a good thing to have every movie ever made available at our fingertips. Maybe there ought to be a place in the world for the video store. I suppose video stores are doomed, but after today, I'll be sad to see them go.
