I finally visited the reincarnation of the classic NYC institution Kim’s Video at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in the city and IT IS PERFECT.
When video stores started closing around 2010, of course it felt like the end of an era, but it was too soon to understand exactly what had been lost. When I was a teenager, every summer I would repeatedly get the 10-old-movies-for-$5-deal that Rogers Video had (and you could keep them for a week) and that’s when the beginning of my love for old horror movies began. There was something so decisive about choosing something to watch, committing to taking it home with you, and then dedicating an hour and half to it (whether it was good or bad). There was more thought put into what you wanted to watch.
I think you can see where I’m headed with this, but I’ll stop now because this isn’t about how streaming services and excessive content have ruined our watching habits today (they have) - this is about how there’s a video store in NYC and you need to go to it.
AND THE RENTALS ARE FREE. How can this place exist in a world where restaurants are charging you for bread and butter now?? Not a clue. But when something is an insanely good deal, it’s best to take advantage of it as much as you possibly can because you never know what the future holds.
I think I spent about 45 minutes just browsing and it felt… transcendent. Maybe even groin-grabbingly transcendent? (Two people will get that joke and I refuse to delete it.) There is something about the experience of physically being surrounded by undiscovered possibilities that I didn’t know how much I missed. It reminded me of a time when choice was more intentional because you had to drive your choice back home with you and maybe even convince others to watch it with you. There’s something valuable about the importance of intention. On a larger scale, we move further from this idea on a daily basis with the things that endlessly distract us that offer no substance. I might be veering off on a tangent (I am) so I’ll stop (sort of). Am I becoming a crotchety old man who laments how it used to be better? In this case, yes absolutely, but I’m not wrong.
Kim’s Video, NYC
That being said, it felt great to step into the past for moment.
The location is a bit tricky to find but once you’re inside the building of 28 Liberty Street, find the escalators going down and then keep going down until you see the Alamo sign. And once you’re inside the Alamo, you can find Kim’s down another set of stairs to the right of the front desk.
While I can’t find the exact operation hours of the place, it opens daily about thirty minutes before the first movie showing so you can easily find out when to visit. Even if you think you don’t miss video stores, you do. You gotta go.
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