It’s no great secret that I have become increasingly more obsessed with the memories of my local rental store, Video Vision. The place that I would visit every Friday and Saturday night with my best friend at the time, and rent the most obscure titles. Obviously we were seriously under age, so his Mom would come along with us to get the tapes. We would spend an age in the horror section scanning the racks to find the most attractive box art, films which we knew would be terrible, but we didn’t care, the artwork did as it was intended and had us sold. Films like Lurkers, Frenchman’s Farm, Lucifer and Nights of Terror.
I find it hard to believe that my old place of worship is now a Curry house, and the horror section reduced to nothing more than a drinks bar. In memory of my old rental store i’ve been compiling a few pictures of other video stores that were based around the UK.
I have to thank a private collectors forum for the majority of pictures, but a lot have been sent in through Twitter. I hope they bring back some memories of your old stores. And please send more!
Great photos. Some of the before and after shots were heartbreaking.
As you know, I used to work in a video store myself, so seeing these stores disappear more and more saddens me.
It almost depresses me to think back. It was the highlight of my weekend when I was a kid, Halloween was even better as we’d rent about 4 tapes and stay up until 3am watching terrible horrors. Saddening.
Hello! I just opened an instagram account called @vhsstorefront
This post of yours is exactly the kind of thing that I had in mind, I can relate to everything you say and I started some years ago taking pictures of any video rental shop still standing, closing, or the remains of a closed one standing in the streets. I would like to use your compilation of photographs, please feel free to contribute to the page, I’ll put your name on the posts!
thanks a lot and congratulations on the hell of a job you made!
@vhsstorefront
Thanks! I’ve seen your posts and I heartly approve. Keep it up!
Sorry about the delayed response.
Hi,
Nice to see my old video shop,EB VIDEOS,still on your site,I often check your site out for the nostalgia,memories etc.If you get time,and go on YouTube,type EB Videos,South Shields,it’s not on long,but worth a look,well I think it is,haha.
Not a problem! Love that store front and would love to interview you some time about your time there. I keep saying it but it is in my plans!