What I miss most about the video store

Netflix will never be as good as the humble video stores it put out of business

It has been nearly a year since two Blockbuster stores in Alaska shut down, leaving a solitary location in Bend, Oregon, as the chain's final storefront — and that lonely outpost continues to fascinate. It's now the subject of a forthcoming documentary and a business-sustaining streak of nostalgia tourism.

I miss video stores, too, though my pining isn't for Blockbuster's blue and yellow. We had an account there when I was in elementary school, but my formative video rental years were in high school and on summers home from college, when I patronized a mom-and-pop shop in walking distance from my house.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.