It’s the 90’s. You’re friend’s with the guy that runs the local no name video store. He holds copies of new releases so you can pick them up after high school and give you first dibs on used tapes about to go on sale.
Ride your bike down to the strip mall. Pick out a couple movies with NC-17 rating and they let you rent them because no one knows what that fucking rating meant. Stop by the CVS that was once a right-aid, and was a Walgreen before that. Go strait for the sprite and angle it so you can read the bottom of the cap. Chain 2-4 free sprites that way.
I played so many different SNES, Genesis, and PS1 games this way. My dad was my sane parent growing up, and every weekend I got to stay with him he did this with me. He'd pick me up from school, we'd score some movies and games, and have dinner. No fighting, no crazy outbursts. Just fun times and chill.
When I was younger he used to read me Hardy Boys mysteries at night. He was a great dad.
You could rent systems for the weekend! New Sonic game came out but you have the SNES? Rent the Genesis and the game, and have a couple friends spend the night.
In 2000 there was a fella who’d drive a van around our estate packed with all these Playstation games, tapes, Game Boy cartridges, all kinds. I think it was a fiver a week to rent a Playstation game off him. That was the end of my pocket money.
My hometown still had this deal going in their local movie rental store until 2020. I miss that place they were the only way to find all the good cult classics after Netflix gutted that part of their selection. So many memories, and after moving away I’d still road trip people there to watch them light up “there’s still a movie store!?”. They gave the movie collection to the local library who immediately auctioned everything alphabetically in bulk so that whole ordeal has been a major loss for the community 😔
Or if you’re a generation older, the story goes like this.
The year is 2000. You work at Blockbuster. A man and his child are picking out 2 movies for the weekend. A drunk old man wearing only a bathrobe approaches the counter and loudly asks where we keep the pornos. The man and his child quickly nope out of there and you’re left dealing with the drunk.
I actually worked at blockbuster in 2000. Got fired because I couldn’t come in right after getting my wisdom teeth taken out although they begged me to come back after.
Never had anyone ask for pornos lol. Usually you had to go to the video store run by a 60+ year old man or woman for those.
I was on pretty good terms with our manager. We’d write comments in the computer on customer accounts to try to get each other to laugh when we scanned the card. Some of the comments were about the customer, most was just random nonsense. I remember scanning a card and an alert notice popped up with the message “I pooped in the drop box” and I just lost it.
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