Movies No-Longer-On-Demand
The corner video store has turned into the city video store.
Time was that you couldn't walk much more than 500 feet in any direction without running smack into a joint that rented VHS tapes. Then, you couldn't walk much more than 2,000 feet without running into a place that rented DVDs.
Now, you can drive for most of a Sunday afternoon without seeing more than a couple video stores.
They close all the time these days, but locally there is a closing that might tug on some heart strings.
I used to go out of my way to venture into Thomas Video. So did everyone else, because there was only one Thomas Video---literally and figuratively.
Thomas Video, the favorite of the intense B-movie fan, is closing up shop. To many, this is like the news of a loved one with a terminal disease passing away. You knew it was coming.
Thomas Video has been located in Royal Oak since 2009, but I remember visiting when it was on Main Street, south of 14 Mile Road, in Clawson.
Like I said, I went out of my way, even when I lived in Warren from 1995-2007.
I went out of my way because there was no place like Thomas Video (TV).
It wasn't so much about renting movies (maybe that was part of why they went out of business) as it was just taking it all in.
The lighting was drab, the place was littered with old, museum-like television sets and the videos were stuffed onto shelves in a sort of haphazard way. But the appeal was great.
Thomas Video was a destination spot because they carried movies and shlock that no other so-called "big box" store would dare touch.
I'm not talking about Godzilla movies from the 1960s. That was child's play for TV.
You had to be a hard-core movie historian or dweeb to have heard of half the titles that TV stocked.
There were also shelves upon shelves of hard-to-find industry magazines and books. There was also an impressive selection of comic books, almost as a complement to the movies---or maybe to keep with the nerdy theme.
Personally, I only rented a few titles. I mainly went there to browse. Maybe in a way I am partly responsible for the store's closing.
Even TV's owners saw the writing on the wall.
“We probably should have done this a long time ago,” co-owner Jim Olenski told the Detroit Free Press. “Business has been really bad over the last few years.”
TV started in 1977, right about when home video started to take off. But Olenski blames video-on-demand, NetFlix and other movie-viewing platforms for chomping into TV's customer base.
Thomas Video co-owner Jim Olenski in the late-1990s
The sad irony is that while those methods of watching movies have indeed taken down a bunch of video stores, TV prided itself on not being one of the bunch.
The appeal of Thomas Video was that you could find titles there that literally no one else offered. Yet that novelty wasn't enough to keep TV going, apparently.
TV wasn't just a store for hard-to-find titles. It also functioned as an intimate location for cult celebrities like The Ghoul and actor Bruce Campbell ("Evil Dead") to hang out and sign autographs.
Olenski put it best, in a self-tribute to him and partner Gary Reichel.
"We wanted to be the last video store standing, and we almost were."
Olenski and Reichel did better than many others who didn't have the guts or the vision to stock the titles that Thomas Video offered.
In fact, maybe that's why they survived for as long as they did.
Time was that you couldn't walk much more than 500 feet in any direction without running smack into a joint that rented VHS tapes. Then, you couldn't walk much more than 2,000 feet without running into a place that rented DVDs.
Now, you can drive for most of a Sunday afternoon without seeing more than a couple video stores.
They close all the time these days, but locally there is a closing that might tug on some heart strings.
I used to go out of my way to venture into Thomas Video. So did everyone else, because there was only one Thomas Video---literally and figuratively.
Thomas Video, the favorite of the intense B-movie fan, is closing up shop. To many, this is like the news of a loved one with a terminal disease passing away. You knew it was coming.
Thomas Video has been located in Royal Oak since 2009, but I remember visiting when it was on Main Street, south of 14 Mile Road, in Clawson.
Like I said, I went out of my way, even when I lived in Warren from 1995-2007.
I went out of my way because there was no place like Thomas Video (TV).
It wasn't so much about renting movies (maybe that was part of why they went out of business) as it was just taking it all in.
The lighting was drab, the place was littered with old, museum-like television sets and the videos were stuffed onto shelves in a sort of haphazard way. But the appeal was great.
Thomas Video was a destination spot because they carried movies and shlock that no other so-called "big box" store would dare touch.
I'm not talking about Godzilla movies from the 1960s. That was child's play for TV.
You had to be a hard-core movie historian or dweeb to have heard of half the titles that TV stocked.
There were also shelves upon shelves of hard-to-find industry magazines and books. There was also an impressive selection of comic books, almost as a complement to the movies---or maybe to keep with the nerdy theme.
Personally, I only rented a few titles. I mainly went there to browse. Maybe in a way I am partly responsible for the store's closing.
Even TV's owners saw the writing on the wall.
“We probably should have done this a long time ago,” co-owner Jim Olenski told the Detroit Free Press. “Business has been really bad over the last few years.”
TV started in 1977, right about when home video started to take off. But Olenski blames video-on-demand, NetFlix and other movie-viewing platforms for chomping into TV's customer base.
Thomas Video co-owner Jim Olenski in the late-1990s
The sad irony is that while those methods of watching movies have indeed taken down a bunch of video stores, TV prided itself on not being one of the bunch.
The appeal of Thomas Video was that you could find titles there that literally no one else offered. Yet that novelty wasn't enough to keep TV going, apparently.
TV wasn't just a store for hard-to-find titles. It also functioned as an intimate location for cult celebrities like The Ghoul and actor Bruce Campbell ("Evil Dead") to hang out and sign autographs.
Olenski put it best, in a self-tribute to him and partner Gary Reichel.
"We wanted to be the last video store standing, and we almost were."
Olenski and Reichel did better than many others who didn't have the guts or the vision to stock the titles that Thomas Video offered.
In fact, maybe that's why they survived for as long as they did.
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