Customer profile
What was the name of your video store?
Video Events?
Where was the store located?
Park Forest, Illinois (United States)
When did you start shopping at this store?
1987
Describe your video store - what did it look like? What were its distinguishing
features?
It was a long thin room inside a strip mall. The distinguishing thing that I remember was probably pretty common - the boxes were empty and you had to peel off little velcro tabs with the name of the movie on it. I do remember that you'd get excited to see that they had the movie you were looking for in, but when you got closer you realized they only had the Beta version in.
What were the employees and/or owners like, and what kinds of interactions
did you have with them? What particularly memorable exchanges or events
do you remember?
I don't remmeber too much interactions except that the employees usually had a movie going that was pointed directly at them and they often seemed more interested in the movie than anything else.
What other services/products did the store offer besides the rental or sale
of videos? Did this change over time?
I don't think they had much more, other than a gumball machine and I believe they began to phase in movie food like microwave popcorn and obscenely oversized candy bars.
What video formats did the store offer (i.e. VHS, Beta, Laserdisc)? Where were
different formats kept in the store?
They had VHS and Beta and they were displayed on little velcro tabs right next to each other beneath empty cassette boxes
In addition to mainstream Hollywood movies, what other kinds of videotapes
(for example children's, exercise, or X-rated) did the store rent/sell? Where were these
videos found in the store, and how often did you rent or purchase them?
I do remember that they had the tapes organized by category, and I'd suspect that they had children's and exercise videos as one category. I don't remember any x-rated films.
Did you tend to rent or buy videos? Why?
Rent. Buying seemed needlessly expensive. I only bought those that were really important to me - like Casablanca and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
During the period that you shopped at this store, what changes did you see?
I don't remember too much.
Is this store still open? If not, when did it close?
Nope. When? Probably 1990/1991. Right about the time when Blockbuster moved into town.
In your own words, tell the story of your first VCR/video player. Where
and when did you buy it, and why did you decide to make the purchase?
During the mid-1980s, Jewel Grocery Stores released a handful of milk cartons that contained salmonella. My brother and I polished off one of those cartons by ourselves and were in bed for about 2 weeks. The company compensate us for our troubles (and to cover their butt). We used part of the meager settlement to buy a VCR. In large part we purchased it becasue we had been house sitting at our "rich" friend's house and my family would stay their way past our bedtime to watch movies.
Did you ever rent a VCR or other hardware (a camera, for instance)? If so,
how often and why?
No.