New York Times:
The second-to-last Blockbuster, a squat blue-and-yellow slab wedged next to a real estate agency in Western Australia, will stop renting videos on Thursday and shut down for good at the end of the month. Two stores in Alaska, part of the final group of Blockbuster outlets in the United States, closed in July.
That will make the Blockbuster in Bend, Ore., one of a kind: a corporate remnant, just off the highway, near a cannabis retailer and a pet cremation service.
And:
The store has several years left on its lease and a license agreement that its owners sign annually with Dish Network, which bought Blockbuster for $320 million in 2011.
I hope it never closes. A throwback to another time, when Back to the Future was still in the future.
But also, what an investment decision by Dish. $320 million, at just the wrong moment in time. Wow!
I miss the experience of the neighborhood video store. Don’t get me wrong, Netflix was a necessary step, but there was something enjoyable about the ritual of going, browsing, discussing, renting, then watching at home. What I don’t miss are the late fees.
We had a Blockbuster in this area when we first moved here, but that didn’t last long. But we found that our local public library has a pretty good DVD selection, updated regularly.
To be fair to Dish, they did try to compete with Netflix in rentals by mail. The thing is, Netflix pivoted to streaming and Blockbuster failed to follow suit.