Friday Night Nostalgia: The Weekend Rental
Oh how gratifying it was to come home from school on a Friday to pick up a brand new (or an old favorite) video game or movie rental for the weekend from your local video store. As soon as you walk in, you are greeted by that familiar video store smell of plastic and stale popcorn. And so much fucking candy! Shelves brimming with shit to rot your teeth! Of course, many times the rental itself would be a venturous risk. More often than not, we would judge a game’s or movie’s coolness off of the boxart alone:
“Sweet! That one has a karate guy on it! Get that one!”
Only to bring it home to find out that it was total shit. And you were screwed. That was your whole weekend, damn it! But then there were those times when you got a game that was cool as shit and you would tell your friends you couldn’t come outside because you were grounded or some shit.
But the days of video rental stores will soon be over. Yes, Netflix is convenient as hell, but I’ll never forget the charm and novelty of a weekend rental from West Coast Video, Blockbuster Video, or Hollywood Video.
