In 2020 I had big plans for a wedding anniversary trip with my wife to L.A. A month before our trip, everything booked, COVID shut the planet down. We canceled our trip. My employer shifted most positions to work-from-home. I needed a separate place to plug into my work mindset, so I could cleanly clock out at the end of the day – and that meant the basement. We had a sagging drop tile ceiling, poor lighting, and cobwebs in every corner. I decided to turn my new office into a video store.
At that point, I had a large collection of movies, but I didn’t keep count. I just enjoyed physical media and seeing favorite titles on the shelf, knowing I could watch them anytime, regardless of streaming availability; this was a hobby since I first got VHS copies of KING KONG, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, and THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD at childhood Christmases. Since I never had a laserdisc player, the advent of DVD, which replicated laserdisc special features to the new format, was a godsend and a new obsession. Blu-ray, which scratched less easily and offered a significant boost in quality, was a natural upgrade; and yes, I’ve made the transition to 4K too. The video store, Midnight Video, wasn’t going to fetishize VHS, whose poor pan-and-scan transfers I was happy to leave behind (though I still have some and occasionally buy an old favorite); it was more about the titles themselves and filling out every classic video store category.
I began hunting for video store shelves, balking at online prices. Then a local Family Video announced it was closing. I swept in like a grim vulture, packing away several heavy wooden shelving units in a U-Haul. I hired a contractor to remove the drop-tile ceiling and install recessed lighting. We repainted, vacuumed up all the cobwebs, and brought out the shelves. I also hunted eBay for video store memorabilia to decorate, in addition to displaying my own poster collection. Finally, I bought a light-up Open sign for the bottom of the basement stairs.
The obsession grew. I expanded the video store from one half of the basement into the other half, squeezing my home office into a corner behind Comedy and Horror. (Maybe a metaphor? Not sure.) For Christmas a couple years ago, my wife asked around and got in touch with a gun shop that was going out of business, acquiring a front counter/display case now put to a much better use than selling weapons. A candy concession stand sits atop the desk now, beside a stack of old Video Watchdog magazines and random flyers for the Music Box Theater in Chicago and Tarantino’s New Beverly Theater in Hollywood. (Yes, we finally took that L.A. trip, albeit four years later.) We even have a return kiosk, a New Arrivals display, and Staff Picks (my wife and son contribute selections). One video store element I wanted to avoid was faded-blue covers from UV coming through the windows. I put in blackout curtains in the smaller windows, and tall Shining-patterned curtains for the basement walkout.
Midnight Video currently has over 3,200 titles – far above what I had when I first put in the shelves. I acquire new “inventory” by hunting through thrift shops as well as purchasing newer titles from boutique and collector labels like Kino, Criterion, Severin, Deaf Crocodile, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, Warner Archive, etc. I am a film buff – I do watch these. But, as I told a bemused visiting plumber the other day, I haven’t watched all of them. That would take the fun out of it. On any night, I might wander downstairs and browse the shelves for something to watch. At my son’s birthday party this year, the mom of one of his friends said that the basement feels like what Friday nights used to be like, the best compliment I could receive.
Leave a Reply