“Video stores went through almost an identical track that bookstores did:
Mom and Pop Bookstores exist.
Big box stores come in and mostly put them out of business.
The internet puts the big box stores mostly out of business, and now I’d KILL to have even one of those somewhere.
Now, with bookstores, indies are back, supposedly. Time will tell. I’m suspicious that a bunch of people have opened a bunch of stores, and it’s not going to work out longterm.
There’s one near me, and it’s a neat space, but the selection sucks. It’s like the guys who run it went to Goodwill, picked up a bunch of trash, and put it on the shelf priced higher.
In fact, I’m sure that’s what happened.
Anyway, we’ll see if movie rental places reopen, too. I guess it’s possible, but I don’t know, I don’t think people have the relationship with the physical media of movies the way they do with books.
The most likely way I see this happening, streaming services continue to divvy everything up, and most services become only collections of things they’ve bankrolled themselves. When and if that happens, we’ll all end up spending way too much on streaming, and maybe there will be a good reason to hit up that sweet physical media.”