On Tuesday, March 31, 2020, at approximately 3:21 p.m. via Facebook, Main Street Video Co-op, beloved video rental store in Moscow, announced their permanent closure. Cause of death: COVID-19.
Connor O’Rourke, manager of the video co-op, said the store’s untimely death occurred after it was deemed a non-essential business. This coupled with a lack of revenue, and the building being sold, made it impossible for the store to keep its doors open. He said if COVID-19 didn’t happen, a full recovery may have been possible.
“There was the process of leaving your house, going out and getting stuff, you know, that kind of made it so people didn’t want to come in,” O’ Rourke said. “We were at the state of ‘Oh you have to close down.’ So I think that’s just something we were looking where, well, I don’t think we can financially recover from this.”
O’Rourke said their full collection of films are being stored in the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, something he hopes could turn into another video store. The collection includes Blu-Ray discs, DVDs and VHS tapes. The movies in the store were mostly based off customer recommendations — consisting of 33,000 titles.
“The good news is, at least the whole collection is still in one piece and it’s still in one place,” O’Rourke said. “They are the type of people who tend to care about movies, so hopefully they do something with it, where they make it available to public.”
The video store was deeply rooted in the Moscow community. The closure impacted members of the community who rented regularly.
Courtney Berge has been going to the video co-op ever since she was a little girl, renting movies there consistently for years.
“When I was a kid I was homeschooled and I would go to coffee with my grandfather on Thursday mornings. And it (the store) was just down the street, so I went one day, and I started renting movies for their five-for-five. It was five movies, for five nights, for $5, which I could afford as a child,” Berge said. “I’d get five movies and I’d watch them over the week. Then I would return them and do it again. I fell in love with old movies and I just would go there and rent everything I could.”
Berge said she was sad when she learned about the closure because there’s “nothing like the experience of renting a film at a video store.”
“It was always just a content place to be,” Berge said. “You’re never stressed when you’re going to rent a movie. I was never in a rush, it was always just a time to browse, and take my time, and figure out what I wanted to spend my time with that evening.”
Now she said she no longer has this experience. Rather, she is stuck using streaming platforms such as Netflix for her movie needs.
“So there’s Netflix and Hulu and all those things now, and I do use them, but their algorithms suck,” Berge said. “You could just go (to the store) and actually find something new. It wasn’t a computer trying to recommend it to you. It was just you looking for what interested yourself without someone telling you what you’d like.”
Berge said going to the video store became a staple for her, and hopes there will be a new video store in Moscow sometime in the future.
Like Berge, other customers have rallied in support of the video store. Cooper Salmon hosts biweekly movie nights at home with his friends. He said the store was always his first place to get a movie, drawn to the high quality that streaming movies didn’t have.
“When you need good quality, you come to the Co-op,” Salmon said.
These are just two customers in the community who have been touched by the video store and there are many more. O’Rourke said, even after the store closed, he has continued to gain support for the store. He said community members would recognize him in public, giving their well wishes for the store.
“I remember a man telling me, ‘I really hope you make it.’ And then while we were standing there waiting, another person walked over and was kind of echoing the same sentiments, they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I love that store,’” O’Rourke said. “It’s nice to know that the community, kind of cared about this thing.”
He said he enjoyed community members visiting the store and seeing teenagers in Moscow grow up with the video store.
“I’d start to see these kids come in on their own, and they’d be like, ‘Oh, let’s look at some movies’ and then they’d come in with their friends, which is kind of nice seeing that happening again because I know that happened to me when I was a kid,” O’ Rourke said.
Love of movies and the video store doesn’t just end with customers, O’Rourke was just as passionate about the store.
“I’m just really thankful for the support,” O’Rourke said. “It really was a great place to work and I’m not taking it for granted.”
The manager has cared about the store ever since he started working there four years ago. He said working at the video co-op was his dream job.
“I guess I’ve just loved movies my whole life,” O’Rourke said. “So a job that I get paid to watch movies was pretty hard to turn down. If I was a little kid, I would go back and tell myself that one day I would be just watching movies all day.”
As a child, O’ Rourke took advantage of his own video store growing up.
“I remember going to video stores when I was a kid and that every single day after school, I would walk around the Hollywood Video and try to find something to watch,” O’Rourke said.
That love for movies has followed him in his career.
O’Rourke said even though he’s disappointed with the store closing, he is thankful for the legacy it was able to have.
“I’m really thankful that Moscow was an area that this place was able to thrive and survive for years. Like, way beyond what it should have been able to survive in,” O’Rourke said.
Berge said she has continued over the years to gush to people in Moscow, and those visiting, to go drop by the video co-op.
“If I meet someone who’s out of town, I’m like ‘have you been to the video rental?’ They look at me and they’re like ‘you have one of those?’ I say ‘it’s so good. They have everything,’” Berge said. “It was kind of a fit for Moscow with our unique, community, oriented town. I liked having it downtown. It was something that anyone could enjoy.”
Story by Lindsay Trombly
Photos by Dani Moore
Illustrations by Kristen Lowe
Design by Lindsay Trombly