Saturday, November 13, 2010
I'm going to miss the place
I spent the start of grade 10 all the way until the end of University working at the place: Videoflicks.
It was originally called Videoland when it first opened in 1990, and the business model involved video store owners paying upwards of $100 for each new release VHS tape to rent out to customers who didn't have choices like zip.ca or Rogers on Demand.
Five years would pass and the business would double the store size and become part of the franchise known as Videoflicks. It was big enough that even Burt Reynolds himself, finding some spare time from acting in the next huge Hollywood blockbuster, endorsed them when they had their own web page:
You know what even more strange, or perhaps somewhat pathetic, is that I actually still remember a large number of membership numbers to this day: Shepherd #20, Locke #1211, Gray #290, Pilon #368, Ouimet #1635 (an absolute a**-hole, I should add) Blackmore #4450 (or was it #3450? She was a sweet lady, gave me a "Canada, eh!" t-shirt before I quit and left for eight months to travel to Australia), and that's just a sampling. Anyway, tons of regulars, to the point where whenever I'd go into the local Loeb to pick up some groceries, I'd usually bump into a customer who would say hi.
But, I guess it couldn't last forever, with downloading and torrent sites becoming more and more common. 20 years after it opened, the doors will be permanently shut at the end of the month. I visited the store a few days ago and spoke to my old boss, who at the time the store first opened was pregnant with her first child. Now her daughter is attending University in her third year. And here I am a new father, just 2 1/2 months into that gig.
It's like this Videoflicks closure is telling me I'm getting all growns-up.
It was originally called Videoland when it first opened in 1990, and the business model involved video store owners paying upwards of $100 for each new release VHS tape to rent out to customers who didn't have choices like zip.ca or Rogers on Demand.
Five years would pass and the business would double the store size and become part of the franchise known as Videoflicks. It was big enough that even Burt Reynolds himself, finding some spare time from acting in the next huge Hollywood blockbuster, endorsed them when they had their own web page:
You know what even more strange, or perhaps somewhat pathetic, is that I actually still remember a large number of membership numbers to this day: Shepherd #20, Locke #1211, Gray #290, Pilon #368, Ouimet #1635 (an absolute a**-hole, I should add) Blackmore #4450 (or was it #3450? She was a sweet lady, gave me a "Canada, eh!" t-shirt before I quit and left for eight months to travel to Australia), and that's just a sampling. Anyway, tons of regulars, to the point where whenever I'd go into the local Loeb to pick up some groceries, I'd usually bump into a customer who would say hi.
But, I guess it couldn't last forever, with downloading and torrent sites becoming more and more common. 20 years after it opened, the doors will be permanently shut at the end of the month. I visited the store a few days ago and spoke to my old boss, who at the time the store first opened was pregnant with her first child. Now her daughter is attending University in her third year. And here I am a new father, just 2 1/2 months into that gig.
It's like this Videoflicks closure is telling me I'm getting all growns-up.
# posted by SBP : 11:11 PM
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It was a great part-time job. Sometimes I miss the days when my pay at Videoflicks paid for all my desires and I had money left over.
I think about 1/2 my pay cheque went towards rentals, VHS movies purchases and all the cans of pop I would have during my shift. It was nice at Christmas though... I remember he would erase any money we owed him as a Christmas bonus.
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