I have to admit, I’m a little sad to hear that Blockbusters are closing, but I get it. I stopped visiting my local BV store a few years ago, and when I did go, I mostly went to Rent games. It was cheaper to rent the games, beat them and return them [I’m really holding my lip from making some sort of pimp/hooker wisecrack but I’ll let you make your own joke regarding Rent, Beat, Return….perhaps I’ve rented too many Quentin Tarantino movies over the years.]

So I’ll take part of the blame. Even now I do quite a bit of digital downloads of games as well as streaming movies. And quite often, I don’t mind paying a little more for instant gratification of the “See it before it’s released to DVD/BluRay.”

My only real gripe about some streaming movie services is that not all movies have Closed Captioning. My hearing is fine, but sometimes the dialog is mixed so poorly in films, I need to be able to read along. Especially in movies with thick British, Australian or Irish accents(sorry mates)–I actually have an easier time understanding Spanish. So unless the film has subtitles, I won’t buy it on the Instant Streams.

So I take part of the blame for the stores closing, but there needs to be some finger-pointing at the company for not buying Netflix when it had the chance and for not adapting to a digital format soon enough. Whoever was in charge of those decisions, are the ones who added the poison in their Kool-Aid.

So I’ll have fond memories of Blockbuster and I’ll miss being able to walk the New Release isle on Tuesdays. I’ll smirk at the thought of still remembering when they used to charge an extra fee for not rewinding their VHS tapes. But the one thing I won’t miss? Standing in line. Some folks use to take FOREVER to rent a movie.

I have one last funny Blockbuster story that I’ll share…

When I moved from Michigan to California 15 years ago, my driver’s license still said Grosse Pointe Shores, MI for a short time before I got my CA ID. Blockbuster asked for my ID to rent some movies and on TWO occasions the clerks asked me about Miami. At first, I couldn’t figure out why they were asking me about Florida and then I realized these geniuses thought I lived in “Grosse Pointe Shores, Miami“— The first time it happened, I just scratched my head, but the second time I couldn’t help but respond with “Yes, I moved here from the beautiful 51st state of Miami.“