As I get older, I start to think more often of when I was younger. When the times were simpler. Simple routines. Like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, switch Wednesday, Thursday, switch Friday, switch Saturday and start all over again. It was the time of eight channels. The time of 4 and 5, of 7 and 9, of 11 and 13, and 16 and 22. It was the time when my dad used to have his black and white TV, picked up I don’t know when, but always good for a Sonics game at night or a public address while eating chicken wings from Wing Dome or Chips Ahoy from the nearest grocery store. It was the time when movies could be rented from a variety of different places like community staples or commercial institutions. People walked up from their couches, strolled a few blocks away, or maybe even took the car to make a five minute drive. For me, there were many. With my mom, there was Video Isle located on Fremont Ave. With my dad, there was Blockbuster Video on 85th St. With my friends there was Hollywood Video. And later on, when the latter two went away, there was even Rain City until the rain faded away. Now, they are down to one: Scarecrow Video on Roosevelt Ave. The last video store in all of Seattle. The last of dying breed.
My childhood can be defined through VHS cassette tapes. My generation will remember, of course, the Blue and White with the yellow through the middle. Blockbuster video was a key ingredient in most sleepovers and many a weekend. Hollywood Video, too. As I look back on those two spots I think of how intelligently they were curated. The inside of Hollywood Video was set up like the inside of a movie theater, lessening the wound of not being able or not desiring to make it out to the cinema. Their walls were adorned with dozens of the same movie that practically grabbed your throat and demanded you to rent it no matter how terrible they looked. There were marquees highlighting the classics and stylized signs that organized each section thematically. Then, of course—and especially with a group—when one miraculously decided on a singular title, there was the line leading to the counter with every single candy imaginable. Candies only found in theaters. Candies you’d never even heard of. Candies even 7-Eleven couldn’t get their hands on. And then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better (or worse) there was the dreaded…”Pickle-In-A-Pouch.” I’d be lying to you if I told you what deals places like Hollywood and Blockbuster had to offer. I know that later on, when the two were going out of business, they made their movies available for purchase. Hollywood advertised a 4 movies for $20 deal. We did that a few times. Somewhere in my dad’s collection he has a copy of “Out of Africa.” I remember one awful memory when I convinced a birthday party I was attending to rent the movie “Bedazzled,” which I still maintain is a good movie. The first time I saw it was really funny. It turned out to be a terrible choice. You know that feeling when you want people around you to like something just as much as you, so you spend every few minutes telling them, “Ok, just wait for this next part, right here—ok, the next scene is super funny though.” It was an absolute nightmare that my friends still won’t let me live down.
The fondest memories were from the local, neighborhood spots, in particular, Video Isle. I loved Video Isle so much and when I was young it felt like I lived there on the weekends. They used to have deals—and I’m probably conflating these—but there was 2-for-1 Tuesdays, 3 for $8 dollars or 3 movies for 7 days whenever (or maybe just the weekends?) and then when they started to raise the price of new rentals, they would give you a dollar off the next purchase if you returned it the next day. Video Isle taught me so much. It taught me how to break things down and taught me how to categorize too, much in the same way that baseball cards taught me math and statistics. “You mean not every movie is the same? There’s ‘Drama’? What’s that? What’s ‘Mischief and Mayhem’ and ‘Comedy’? Who is Martin Scorcese and why are all of his movies in this section? It became another library for me. A place to learn and educate myself. I remember one time I spent an afternoon there just counting how many of the movies I had seen. It took a long time, but not because I had seen so many—it felt like I hadn’t seen anything at all. My mom and dad raised me to know the importance of international cinema and the languages of the world. It felt like more often than not we found ourselves in that little nook right after the entrance renting “Yi-Yi”, “Central Station” or “Red”, “White” and “Blue” from the Kieslowksi “Colors” trilogy. Video Isle had this awesome way of marking movies as staff favorites, putting star stickers on movies that they really liked. Some movies had more stars than others, like “Groundhogs Day” and “Clerks.” Funny story—one of our favorite employees, Kevin, who we invited to my Bar Mitzvah, recommended “Clerks” to my mom and I one night. I wouldn’t say there were tons of misses from the Video Isle staff or from Kevin for that matter, but let’s just say that my mom didn’t find it highly amusing to discover that one of the fictional characters in the movie dies trying to give himself fellatio in a bathroom nor did she think I needed to know what that meant at my age (I was pretty young at the time). Now, in the film I don’t think they used the term fellatio--I’m thinking they were a little more straight to the point, but what was clear is that my mom may or may not have made Kevin very uncomfortable when he asked us if we had liked the movie or not. But don’t worry. He redeemed himself with other suggestions over the years. There were other employees, including one woman, who literally lived two houses down. She was so cool and I remember watching her kid grow up. As I got older and started to walk around in the area more often I became more aware of those yellow cassette tapes tucked under people’s arms, cassette tapes that turned into DVDs that listed 3 or 1-day rentals and were adorned with a pink parcel that said to take it back the following day for a discount. And how can I forget—the popcorn. Oh my goodness, the popcorn. The best popcorn in the history of movies and movie stores. Ask anyone in Fremont or other nearby neighborhoods to attest and they will. Popcorn made fresh. Popcorn whose kernels we would gladly let get stuck in our teeth. Popcorn that wouldn’t last the walk home.
Towards the end of middle school and into high school my dad and I started to go to Rain City, usually the one on Market St. in Ballard, but occasionally the one on 36th St. in Fremont. They used to offer 2-for-1 on Thursday, I think? Maybe Wednesday? It was one of those middle days of the week. It was sometimes kind of hard to choose a movie with my Dad because one of three things would happen. Either he’d let me choose one that he didn’t care to watch and he’d choose one for a day I wasn’t there or he would choose a movie that he hoped I would like and he would choose one for a day I wasn’t there or he would let me choose one that maybe we both agreed on (and hadn’t seen) and one other movie that I wanted to watch without him. The truth was, for all the movies I had seen, he had seen more. And looking back on it—I could have done more to listen to him because he usually would be down to revisit a classic or a good flick that for one odd reason or another I was opposed to. I’m sure my dad remembers one of our favorite employees at Rain City, this tall Asian man with long, long black hair. I want to say his name was Brandon? Ivan? Ray? I wish I could remember better, but one thing is for certain—I’d always see him in the neighborhood and his hair would always be floating in the wind trying to catch up with him.
Rain City closed first. I think they’re salons now. One of them is, I think. The other is part of a bar, but used to be in such a cool spot, in that corner lot near Roxy’s Deli. Video Isle’s disappearance came later. Now we have one giant remaining—the singular Scarecrow Video. Any movie lover or movie hater, any Seattle frequenter or Seattle visitor, any person with a beating heart must take the time to give Scarecrow video a visit. I do now know how long it will be there, but it has been for 30 plus years. It has 137,000 titles and some movies require a deposit in the hundreds either cause of the sheer rareness or they have the only existing copy or the movie is out of stock—take your pick. Sometimes when I was younger I used to honestly be scared of Scarecrow. As a kid, it gave you that feeling of a reclusive collector’s basement, except in this instance, wide out in the open for the whole world to see. I mean the magnitude of the place cannot be understated. There are innumerable categories. Directors you’ve never even heard of. Specialities and themes you couldn’t even dream up, except they did. There are twists and turns—it’s a maze to an extent, but one you can get out of. It is a wonder of the city and the more you think of it—a wonder of the world, especially cinematically. I’ve never been to “Vidiots” in Los Angeles, but Scarecrow certainly holds its own. I started to talk to the employees more often, feeling less intimidated as an adult. They are as kind and as knowledgeable as any historian and there is a joy and appreciation for cinema there. Last year, during the pandemic I made sure to go there as often as I could. And this is not going to be one of those, stop watching Netflix and paying for ten streaming services and go to your local video store soapbox speeches, however, now there is only one video store you can go to. I hope that puts it into perspective. Scarecrow is constantly hosting fundraisers because they have no other choice if they are going to sustain themselves. I hope it continues to be around forever.
This is the power of local and the community. The beauty of memory. The sadness of growing up because certain things cannot stay the same. I go to Seattle often and go up Fremont Ave. often, too. Video Isle is still there, although it is empty inside, and more hollow than ever during the nighttime. The hanging posters on the side are vacant and no longer. But the sign is still there. You know that it used to be something. I know that it used to be something. And it always will be.
There.