There was a particular charm to the video rental stores of the 1980s and 1990s. Ceiling-tall shelves of stock organized by section. Stands holding microwavable popcorn and boxed candies.
For Galadriel Olson, it all represents maybe the purest form of childhood nostalgia. One that she and others are bringing back.
In mid-March, Olson opened up Way Cool Video, a throwback video rental store, nextdoor to her art supplies shop on Madison Ave. in Lakewood. She quickly assembled a library of some 2,000 titles, with snacks for sale and VHS players to loan out. A child of the 1980s, Olson colored the store in neon purples and greens.
Just like the Blockbusters or Hollywood Videos of old, the model is simple: $3 to rent most films, five days to return.
“The whole idea came from a conversation I was having with friends,” Olson, 47, said, walking around her shop recently. “We were just, like, missing the experience of going to a rental shop and renting movies on a Friday or Saturday night.”
“It was really just the whole experience,” she said, recalling growing up in Houston. “Just an inexpensive thing to do on a weekend night.”
Video rental stores have been on consistent decline since the early 2000s, accelerated by the dawn of Netflix and the ubiquity of internet access and streaming. By 2020, the number of stores across the U.S. was in the three figures. Today, the only remaining Blockbuster is in Bend, Oregon.
But there’s a reversal — if small — afoot.
A wariness over streaming services and endless subscriptions has mixed with nostalgia for physical media to create a slight boom for in-person movie collecting. The shuffle and limit of titles on various platforms makes it logical.
DVD and Blu-ray sales declined just nine percent last year, compared to drops of 20 percent in 2023 and 2024, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association that tracks the industry. Similar jumps in sales were reported by the Criterion Collection and Barnes & Nobles.
“People want to own things and build libraries,” Bill Castle, Barnes & Nobles music and video specialist, told Relevant Magazine. “It’s convenient. They can listen or watch them at any time. They don’t have to worry about what streaming service has it up.”
Or whether the version of a film on Amazon Prime or Hulu is the version a fan wants to see, as some directors recut or re-edit movies long after their initial release.
Then, as Olson said, there are the little things often forgotten. The thought-out DVD selection screen. The menus of special features and outtakes. The special edition box sets.
“It looks like the original way the film was meant to look,” Olson said, holding up a copy of Steel Magnolias. “When you’re watching a VHS, it looks different. It just looks like the 1980s, you know?”
That aesthetic, and the homage to cassette collecting and the sort, is the basis of Lenora’s Midnight Rental, the late-night horrow film showcase hosted by writer Laura Wimbels.
Wimbels, whose shows regularly show off stacks of VHS tapes, thinks there’s a push among younger generations—those that have never stepped in a Blockbuster—to collect tangible things.
“I think that’s what the appeal is for these chronically-online, chronically-digital Gen Z types,” she said. “There’s a whimsy in it for them.”
Recently, Wimbels invited Scene to Coreno’s Video off West 130th St. to indulge in the once-necessary art of browsing movies in person. An exercise equally nostalgic and surprising, one ripe with new encounters — stumbling on cult horror flicks, country music compilations, missed gems and staff recommendations.
At one point Wimbels picked out a VHS from the $1 shelf, a 1990 film called Nascar Goes Hollywood. She laughed. “I mean, where else are you gonna find this?” she said.
Her mind went backwards, to her beloved days of working at the Hollywood Video in Berea.
“You choice had to count then,” she said. “You couldn’t just scroll endlessly on Netflix. You had to be confident that whatever you were leaving the store with was good.”
A choice, better yet a hunt, that Olson wants to keep alive at Way Cool.
Whether that means renters are hunting for Wes Anderson, for all of the Jungle Book series, for campy Chupacabra flicks, for Mel Gibson classics or the Lord of the Rings as it was originally intended to be seen.
Olson took out a VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which made a writer ponder the last time he sat down and actually watched the movie in full.
“Exactly. People say, ‘I hadn’t thought about that movie in a while,’” she said. “Whereas a streaming service won’t show you that. You can’t get that feeling from the algorithm.”
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