I was very sad to learn recently that Vulcan Video North, one of the Austin-based company's two locations, closed in December, just a few months after I moved away from the area. The South Austin location is still open at the time of this writing but I have a sinking feeling time may be running out for it. Vulcan's longtime competitor I Luv Video still has a location open too.
I think I speak for most movie fans when I say that losing a video store you frequent is like losing a friend or a loved one. We all miss our old neighborhood Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos, right? But Vulcan Video is one of those more niche, specialized little family-owned operations that really caters to movie buffs and not a general audience. They have everything, foreign films, cult films, stuff that's only on VHS, stuff that's been out of print on DVD for 20 years, Criterion DVDs, imported DVDs, everything.
The shelves are floor-to-ceiling and the movies are packed in with their spines out instead of the front covers showing to save space. They're organized by country, by director, by studio, by subgenre. If you want a Hammer Horror film, there's a section for that. If you want a Robert Rodgriguez movie, there's a section for that. Jackie Chan has a section. Troma has a section. There's a whole shelf just of documentaries about making movies. Traditional video store extras like a video game section or an entire wall just for new releases are cut out to make room for more of the good shit, like a complete set of all the Something Weird Video VHS releases.
Vulcan South was actually the first of the locations I went to, a long-ass time ago when I didn't really appreciate how awesome the selection was, but Vulcan North was so special to me during the two years I lived in the area and visited it regularly. It was a great place to hang out, especially late at night when all the other Austin movie nerds crawled out of their caves and congregated there to chat with the staff about Shin Godzilla or Dario Argento or whatever the conversation happened to turn to. I always figured it's the kind of place that would just be there forever, resisting the march towards streaming by appealing to a very dedicated audience, so it was a huge shock to learn of the closure. They didn't use physical membership cards so the only memento of my time there is a stack of some of my old receipts that roughly span Halloween 2015 to summer 2017.
I got sentimental and made a list as complete as possible on Letterboxd of all the stuff I rented there, based on the receipts and my recollection. It's actually a lot fewer movies than I would have guessed, since sometimes it seems like I was in there every weekend, but the actual number reflects that this was more of a special occasion whenever I wasn't busy with school. Vulcan South is actually within driving distance of where I live now, though it's a bit far, so while I plan to start paying it some visits soon, it'll probably never been a regular occurrence either.
I also strongly recommend checking out this piece by Jimmy Kimmel about the store and its owners, which includes some fucking hilarious commercials he and Matthew McConaughey put together for them.
Submitted March 08, 2018 at 07:42AM by CosmicAstroBastard http://ift.tt/2tuG2pk