The Smell of Popcorn

Growing up, I remember when going to the video store was a special event. My parents would bundle up my brother, my sister and me into our mini van and we would go to the video store where we would rent a couple of VHS tapes.

The video store was a wondrous place for a kid. There were rows upon rows of the latest films and Nintendo video games for rent. The newest ones were displayed in big groups (what is it about seeing twenty copies of the same movie lined up near each other that makes them look so watchable?!)

The store itself smelled like the saltiest most buttery popcorn you could ever imagine. Best of all, when we were very young, the store we visited (Video 99 - this was before the shortlived era of Blockbuster's video store dominance),  gave us free popcorn to munch as we browsed the shelves! I call that magical time when anything was possible the 80s".

Netflix has changed that forever of course. Now it's so easy to just watch movies online....

...or is it?

A strange thing happened on the way to Netflix's global net streaming hegemony. Like vinyl record stores, a few videostore holdouts seemed to have survived the great video store purge of the last few years and one of them happens to be in my 'hood, Audiovideo Centre. That's it's name: "Audiovideo Centre".

We were enticed into the store last week by a free coupon deal and the fact that it is literally just down the street. I hope going to the store becomes a regular family occurrence. The store has a scrappy and quirky look, which is fun on its own, but the main benefit over Netflix is that they have a lot of movies that Canadian Netflix doesn't have. Chalk one win for diversity.

Will they survive? I hope so! Ask me in a couple of years and I will let you know if they made it.