By LAUREN KASZUBA
Co-Arts Editor
Would you believe me if I told you that there is actually a Blockbuster still open in the United States? I didn’t believe it, at first. Here is something to consider: in 2004, over 9,000 Blockbuster stores were open across the country. In 2018, only one remains in the small town of Bend, Oregon.
Sandi Harding, the general manager of the Bend, Oregon Blockbuster, is essentially doing what Netflix provides to its customers: she knows what her customers want to rent and serving that to more people. She believes that there is a place for Netflix and Hulu, but also believes that there is a place for a video rental store such as Blockbuster.
Perhaps this is due to the sense of community that is detected in this small town Blockbuster. Harding mentioned that the now long-gone tradition of going into a Blockbuster, picking up a movie, and talking about movies in general is something that people miss. The employees in her store are downright passionate about movies and they truly care about sharing them with people. In fact, there is a section in this last Blockbuster store dedicated to movies that are handpicked by the employees.
Think about this, with Netflix, this personable video shopping experience is nonexistent. At Blockbuster, you can take your time to peruse the selection of movies in person, or you can even ask a human being for a movie recommendation.
It’s important to note that Bend is a passionate film town, located three hours outside of Portland. At one point, the town had four video stores despite the population being around 55,000. The town supported all four stores for quite some time. Bend also holds a yearly film festival and has three movie theaters. The tight-knit community that has a love for art is perhaps another reason why Bend is the last town with a Blockbuster store.
“People are gravitating toward that experience – some kind of curation, someone they trust to tell them what to see,” said Todd Lobby, executive director of Bend Film.
However, we all do not live near Bend, Oregon, to get that one-on-one movie shopping experience. Video-on-demand services such as Mubi, however, are thinking in the same terms as Blockbuster, handpicking films for users to watch online.
“Where we come from is a place of knowledge and passion, choosing films that we think are interesting and vital and important versus data that makes assumptions about ‘Well, this is popular, so this should be popular, too. You like this, so maybe you’ll like that’,” said Daniel Kazman, director of content for Mubi. “To us that has no human quality at all.”
“Curation, I feel like always needs to exist, hand-in-hand with a venue,” he adds.
It seems as if the last Blockbuster will be run by the loyal customer support that the employees have gained over the years. It’s a key part of the community in Bend and it doesn’t seem as if platforms such as Netflix and Hulu will be shuttering it anytime soon. In other words, if you’d like to revisit some beloved memories of Blockbuster, you most likely still have time to travel to Bend and feed your nostalgia.
