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Venerable Video Store Under Axe by Doniphan Blair
Staff member at at dog-friendly Le Video hands out a treat. photo: Melanie Graysmith
DARWIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION HAS
been disproven by Silicon Valley. Only the profitable should survive, according to the digital Masters of the Universe, even though profits do not reflect longterm needs and many of the Internet's biggest companies, like Netflix and Amazon, are still not profitable.
Hence, Le Video, the video rental store with the most extensive collection of rare DVDs in the Bay Area, is threatened with closure in the beginning of May. They have been doing business in San Francisco's Inner Sunset, at 1231 9th Ave, for 34 years, see their site.
"The big info we are trying to convey is that we are hoping we won't have close," said John Taylor, their buyer of new videos for last eight years, in our recent phone conversation.
"We just have to shrink our foot print, preserving the complete collection while sharing the space with a coffeeshop or book store. We are also working on a crowd-sourcing campaign," he added.
Le Video street facade is not lacking in Hollywood glitz. photo: courtesy Le Video
Here is your last chance to rent movies not viewable on Netflix or anywhere else save once every couple of years at the Pacific Film Archives. Although Netflix has over 120,000 titles, a small fraction are on demand; the classics are not well represented; and their esoteria is pitiful.
Le Video on the other hand has over 70,000 titles, ALL ON DEMAND, as it were, and an incredible array of hard-to-finds. To check the veracity of this claim, I quizzed Taylor on Le Video's esoteria: "'El Topo' [Alejandro Jodoroski, 1970]?"
"Of course," he said with a laugh, "the remastered version AND on Blu-Ray."
"Denis Hopper's 'Last Movie' [1971]?"
"The funny thing is we have that on VHS but it is temporarily unavailable because it has been pulled for digitizing because it's pretty rare."
"Kenneth Anger, 'Scorpio Rising' [1964]?"
"Yup, we have a whole experimental section—the New York underground, a San Francisco indie section."
"I remember rushing over to Le Video with John Stroh one afternoon to see if they had a certain DVD we needed for the Golden Gate Film Festival," a staff member of the San Francisco International Film Festival told CineSource's Karl Cohen. "They saved the day!"
Meanwhile, a film researcher writing an article on Hitchcock told us, "The ONLY place that had the lesser-known Hitchcock films was La Video. Not even Amazon or Netflix had them."
Much like "Creative Destruction"'s supposed benefits elsewhere, the closing of Le Video and other "Last Archive" video stores will terminate the incredible access to the art of film provided in the 1970s by the invention of VHS. It's as if art books were being discontinued and the only place you can see certain works is in museums.
The spread of Le Video's film stacks is truly spectular. photo: courtesy Le Video
Catherine Tchen has been Le Video's owner since day one, over 34 years ago. Previously the owner of a camera shop around the corner, she began carrying PAL video imports from Europe because she herself wanted to see them.
In keeping with Ms. Tchen's interests: "We have a lot of stuff never released in the States," Taylor said. "For example, Korean editions of Douglas Sirk films."
Tchen has seen ups and downs before but now the situation is dire. According to a store email: "We're still seeking a solution to keep the doors open but bottom line is: We are—and so is the building owner—broke!"
"Unless there is a miracle, it looks like we'll be closing (rentals) by the end of April, that's 8 weeks for everyone to redeem their existing prepaid rentals."
One option is they could become a movie lounge with no more browsing of all the shelves BUT the entire Le Video collection still available for rentals, showing and classes.
To make matters worse, they had to truncate their hours even earlier then expected because they're short staffed. One employee quit last week, after giving no notice, while another, in true video rental store tradition, is on tour with his band.
While the closing of the big commercial video stores has been upon us for five years, the loss of the last archival shops may be looked upon like the burning of the library in Alexandria.
Fortunately in this case, something can be done—simply go rent a video like "El Topo", tell your cinephile entrepreneur friend you have found the perfect place to open a cafe or kick-in to their Indiegogo Campaign.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker, and can be reached .Posted on Mar 21, 2014 - 06:02 AM