It’s a scorching summer afternoon in 2018. The air is still. A red vinyl banner droops down the side of a squat stucco building, its white block letters shouting: GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE. Video Droid—our neighborhood video store—is closing after 34 years. I’ve been coming here for 18 of them.

The parking lot is jammed. Cars spill into the pizza parlor’s spaces next door and line the surrounding streets. I luck into a parking spot, then hop out and hurry toward the building, a low-grade panic setting in. Am I too late? Is everything worth having already gone? My flip-flops stick slightly to the heat-softened asphalt as I cross the lot.

Inside, Video Droid is packed—more crowded than I’ve ever seen it, even on a Saturday night in its heyday. People clog the narrow aisles, shouldering past one another in front of shelves that once held thousands of DVDs. A small monitor dangling from a wooden ceiling beam plays Blazing Saddles. A woman with stringy blond hair and blue tattoos winding down both arms pulls 8 Mile from the rack and drops it into a cloth bag, then adds Boyz n the Hood. Nearby, a man in shorts and a Giants cap beams at his young son.

“You’ll love E.T.,” he says, plucking a multi-disc set from the shelf. “It’s great.”

I make a beeline for the Criterion Collection at the back of the store. Alas—but not surprisingly—the shelves are nearly bare. No The Third Man. No Rashomon. No Weekend. What remains are a few obscure French films by directors I’ve never heard of. I feel a real pang of disappointment, sharper than I expected. Why didn’t I come earlier? The sale was front-page news in the local paper. I should’ve known better.

Video Droid is closing. An era is ending. And there’s no mystery as to why. Netflix and streaming did it. In 2000, there were roughly 28,000 video stores in the United States. By 2017, there were about 2,000. Then COVID slammed the door shut. Today, only a couple of hundred remain.

Not that long ago, video rental stores were woven into the fabric of everyday life. And indie shops like Video Droid were heaven for film fanatics like me. We liked to scoff at big-box places like Blockbuster—though, in moments of desperation, we went there too.

My first video paradise was Vidiots in Santa Monica. Vidiots was where I could walk up to the film nerd with a mohawk behind the counter, hold up a VHS copy of The Bridge on the River Kwai, and tap the back of the box.

“It says here Pierre Boulle wrote the screenplay,” I explain, “but the actual screenwriters were Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman. They were blacklisted during the anti-communist witch hunts of the ’50s, so Boulle—who wrote the novel BUT DIDN’T EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH—got the credit and the Oscar.”

And, because I am young, and passionate about the subject—and prone to over-explaining at any age—I don’t leave it at that. “Eventually, both the Writers Guild and the Motion Picture Academy corrected this travesty, and Wilson and Foreman’s names were added to later prints.”

“Wow,” says Mohawk Girl. “I didn’t know that. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

The next time I’m at Vidiots, I pull Bridge on the River Kwai from the shelf and find a handwritten note taped to the back which details the writing history of the movie. It was that kind of place.

Vidiots closed in 2017. Now Video Droid is closing too.

Of course, it isn’t just video stores. Brick-and-mortar retail of all kinds—neighborhood shops and corporate giants alike—is vanishing. Sears. K-Mart. Bed Bath & Beyond. RadioShack. Toys “R” Us. Shopping malls are becoming ghost towns, vast indoor ruins of escalators and food courts.

I turn away from the stripped-down Criterion shelves and head to Film Noir. I scan the spines, searching for old favorites. Double Indemnity—gone. Sunset Boulevard—gone. Touch of Evil—gone. My expectations drop to nearly zero as I weave through the crowd to Classics.

Why do I even want these DVDs? I can stream most of these movies anytime I choose. Maybe it’s smarter not to spend money on plastic relics. But still… there’s something about the physical object. Is it nostalgia? A desire for ownership? For permanence? What happens if streaming services jack up prices, or quietly remove titles, or the internet goes down entirely? Does a tangible object offer a kind of reassurance in a world where so much feels provisional?

The Classics section is still half full, though the cases are out of order now, leaning drunkenly into empty spaces. With little hope of finding anything I care about, I lazily run my finger along the spines. And then—there it is: The Hustler. And wait—There’s Night of the Iguana... And Marnie... And Blade Runner!

And then, tucked away in the jumbled Staff Picks section, my favorite film of all time: Chinatown! I can’t believe no one has grabbed them already. But somehow, miraculously, they’re mine.

Treasures in hand, I stand in the long line snaking through the aisles toward the register, content—maybe even a little smug. The woman behind me cranes her neck, trying to peek at my stack. I turn and show her.

“Great haul,” she says.

“What did you get?” I ask.

She opens her Sonoma County Library book bag. “Mostly for my grandkids. But this one’s for me.” She pulls out The Breakfast Club. “My favorite.”

“Fantastic,” I say, secretly happy that not everyone shares my taste.

We exchange knowing smiles.

A few minutes later, I pay, step outside, and carry my stack of movies into the bright afternoon. I don’t look back. There’s nothing left to see—just a banner, some fading letters, and the quiet certainty that something familiar has slipped, finally and permanently, into history.