Video Store Interview: Black Dog Video

Video stores are struggling all over the world, not just in the US. Up in Vancouver, Black Dog Video just closed after almost 30 years of business. I had the chance to talk with owner Darren Gay about the origin of the store (the name came from a black dog he used to own), and his thoughts on the future of video stores & physical media.

When did your interest in movies begin?

Oh, probably when I was a little kid. I remember going and seeing jaws at the drive in 1975 with my parents and scaring the hell outta me. I always loved movies. One of my other earliest memories is, we had a pool growing up, in the summertime. I had summertime friends that would come over and hang out my pool, and I wouldn’t see for the rest of the year when school started, but they’d be in my pool swimming and I’d be in my basement watching movies, like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. As they’re out having fun, I’m sitting in the dark on a hot July afternoon. So I’ve always loved movies as long as I can remember.

When you were growing up in the eighties, did you go to video stores?

Oh yeah, I loved going to the video stores. I was there all the time. Granted, growing up in the eighties, they were plentiful, so there were lots to choose from. I would basically exhaust the collection of this one and then go check out the other one and that kind of stuff. But yeah, I lived in video stores way back then.

So where did the idea for opening your own video store come from?

I was in the university in a small town called Guelph in Ontario and they had a great little shop there. It was like the best video store I’d ever called Thomas Video, just cause they had such an eclectic collection of stuff, and lots of stuff I’d never heard, the kind of movies you take a chance on, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But it sort of planted a seed I guess. And then, when I finished university and I kicked around there for a little bit, I moved out to Vancouver in 1995 and the neighborhood I moved into didn’t have one. There was like a Blockbuster or a crappy Mega Movies or some lousy store just down the street that I would go there and they were so terrible. They were just so disappointing. I’d go in there and I’d be there for like 20 minutes or half hour and just leave with nothing because their selection was so dire. So I just thought, well, why don’t I open my own shop? I know a fair amount about movies and just started doing the research. And then in March of 1996, we up our first little shop over on Cambie street in Vancouver.

Was there a need for video stores in Vancouver at that time?

Well, there was a definite need where I lived, just because there wasn’t one. As I said, there was a Blockbuster that were maybe about a 15 minute walk from where I lived, but there was a lot of video stores in Vancouver at the time and some really excellent ones: Videomatica, Limelight Video, Applause. There were a lot of really good shops then, but nothing in my area. And it was basically the heyday of video stores, so I didn’t see adding another one to the landscape, especially one that was, I had hoped to curate it as much as I could, there was definitely room for another one I thought.

One of my favorite things in video stores is unique categories or sections. Did you have any unique sections that you were proud of?

Yeah, when I first started off, I wanted to highlight directors. So we had a director section. In our foreign section, if we had enough films by any given director, we would have sections for them. Some of the other ones, especially in our cult section, we had a Nuns-ploitation section, a Nazi-ploitation section. We had like a one section with a sort of a racy films called, Let’s have a sexy party. Let’s go for a drive, films about driving, like Smoky and the Bandit and Two-Lane Blacktop and stuff like that. So yeah, we had had a lot of fun little sections in the shop.

Did you have a lot of regular customers over the years?

Oh yeah. I’ve had customers that have been coming since we opened in 1996. I sold the original store in 2020 to one of my employees cause I opened my second shop in 2005 and that’s the one I just closed recently, but that shop over on Cambie street that we opened in 96. There’s still customers that are coming that were there when we opened the doors. I’ve seen people like have kids, and now the kids are 25 years old. It’s so weird. So yeah, we’ve had customers for forever, which is awesome.

What happened with that original store?

It’s still operating as a video store. It’s actually the last rental shop in the area. It’s changed its name, it’s now Video Cat. One of my employees, RJ, runs it and it’s basically still almost the same shop as when I left it, cause it still has the same great collection. But he still keep keeping it going over there. I’m hoping he gets a nice little bump from us closing cause you know, times are tough for the video stores these days. So, you know, any little addition to business you can get, I’m hoping for the best. I’m gonna be going over there to rent my movies from now on. I don’t have that resources down the street here anymore, unfortunately.

Do you know any other video store owners in Canada that you talk with or you’ve met?

Yeah, there have been a couple different Facebook groups for independent video stores owners. I met a guy who runs one in Edmonton called The Lobby, it’s an awesome little shop and Kevin’s a really good dude. Then there’s a couple in Toronto, Eyesore Cinema and Bay Street Video, which are both excellent stores. So I chat with those guys fairly often.

That’s good to hear, since you started your store in 1996 before the internet really. How do you feel social media and the internet has changed how you run a video store?

Yeah, well, it’s a curse and a blessing. The curse being, you know, now that streaming is so widely available, people are just get lazy and they’d rather just, the idea of having to leave the house to go get something that might be interesting or fun as opposed to just watching whatever crap is on Netflix or whatever, it’s changed, and it’s changed it forever. I call it the convenience of mediocrity, cause people just, they’d rather just not put the effort in, but it’s also made it easier to stay in contact with people and find films from around the world. So there is that, but it’s basically destroyed the video store industry. Stores are still dropping like flies it seems to me, unfortunately.

Here in Los Angeles, we’re lucky that we still have Cinefile Video and Videotheque, and Vidiots is reopening this year.

Yeah, like who knows. The future doesn’t look all that bright, but when you hear places like that opening up again, it gives you a little bit of hope that there still might be something there, but it’s just such a tough business now, cause there’s so many options online even when you’re not watching a streaming service. There’s just other things to do online that takes away your time from watching a movie.

What would you say was like the peak of business for your store?

It was a hit right off the bat. So I would say like from, after we got up and running, and we moved from, we had like a little 800 foot shop and we moved two years into like a larger shop across the street. So would say like 98 to about 2009, 2010-ish was sort of the peak, for us anyways. Things started to slide around 2010, 2012, is when things started heading in the wrong direction, as I remember anyways. It seems like such a long time ago.

And was that directly because of Netflix and streaming?

Yeah, I think so. Because when Netflix was introduced, I can’t remember, it was at least 10 years ago, I guess. I noticed right off the bat we lost a huge chunk of business. The last nail on the coffin was when Disney+ started two years ago, that’s when I noticed like a huge, like our kids section, nobody was coming to rent them anymore, cause so much stuff was on Disney, like all the Disney movies, they had the Ghibli stuff. So there wasn’t a much call to come and pay for the same things you can get on the streaming services. So yeah, sort of a death by a thousand cuts kind of thing. Every time something new came along, it’s just another little ding into the shop.

How did the COVID shutdown affect business?

Well, it was funny cause I thought actually that it would be okay for us. We were closed for a couple months, but I was doing little pop-ups a couple times a week, and the government here was actually quite helpful, we got grants and I only had to pay like half the rent and wage subsidies and stuff like that. So it was okay that way, but instead of folks coming, loading up on films and staying home and watching them, people just stayed home, and then once the sort of the restrictions were lifted a lot more in this last year, the people didn’t really come back, unfortunately. And then once all the grants and the subsidies dried up, then it just didn’t help us, that’s for sure.

Did you have a most rented title?

Some of the ones that rented the most were Withnail and I, The Wicker Man, Harold and Maude, all the Wes Anderson stuff, a lot of the Billy Wilder stuff, like Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity. Our Kubrick stuff always rented really well. Suspiria was always a great renter. So we had a lot of really cool little, you know, smaller, not as popular films that were our best renters.

Do you remember any famous customers who came through the doors?

We had quite a few actually. Kevin Smith was in a few years ago and we got this great photograph of him behind the desk and he signed all of his boxes and he was so happy to find out he had a little section in the director’s section, it blew him away. We had Oliver Stone in one time. I wasn’t there, but one of my employees was there and she was like, oh wow, it’s Oliver stone. And he had like an assistant with him, and she was talking to the assistant and said, oh, can I go over and say hello to Oliver stone, and the assistant went over and conferred with Stone and came back, and said, Oliver Stone is not talking to people today. So, didn’t get to meet him. Matt Dillon used to rent here, and Alan Ruck. Udo Kier was here for a film festival, that guy was a blast, we had a lot of fun hanging out with him. So we had a few interesting folks come through the shop for sure.

How was the experience of closing the store?

Well, it was crazy, you know, like once after I made the announcement, I guess in April, I just got like a deluge by the media here. It was nuts. It was very overwhelming, emotionally up and down, it’s a roller coaster. And then once we put the collection upper sale, that was bonkers, the very first day, there were people lined up at six in the morning and we opened at noon. And then once the sale started, the line stressed around the block into the alley and there’s was a three and a half hour wait to get into the shop and we were just run ragged, it was just bonkers and crazy up until Friday. And so I spent 12 hours, just basically by myself getting everything out of the shop and ready for the new tenant. So it’s been exhausting and insane and be honest, I’m glad that part is over, just cause I just need a break cause it’s been so tiring. So yeah, it’s just been a whirlwind of craziness in the last two months or so.

Did some of those long time customers come through in the final days?

Oh yeah. We had people popping in just to say, you know, how much they’re gonna miss us, dropping gifts off, people were in tears and it was all over the social medias. People were expressing their sadness that we were going. And it’s really unfortunate. It’s really nice to know that we’re that much appreciated and loved in the city. It would’ve been nice if all those people, you know, came in and supported us in the dying days. But I understand, it was gonna happen sometime, just the way things are going. It just was now, and it was crazy, but yeah, we had lots and lots of customers and former customers come in and pay their respects.

What you think you’ll miss the most about running the store?

Just even just going in every day and just being there, surrounded by all these awesome films, it’s just very comforting and nice and so used to it, but I’m gonna miss the people the most of all, like my employees. Well, I gonna see them on a regular basis cause we do a podcast together. So yeah, we’re gonna keep that going. But just like all the friends I’ve made through the shop, you know, all the customers that I know on first name bases, I know lots about their lives and lots about mine. So kinda like a bartender over a lot of people it seems. But I am gonna miss the people, that’s gonna be the number one thing I’m gonna miss.

When did you start the podcast and what was the idea behind that?

I guess we started about two years ago. I do it with my employees, Dylan and Alex, and we were just sitting around having drinks one time talking movies, and it was like, well, why don’t we just record this? Because this is what we do, we sit around and we have a beer and we talk about movies. So we just kicked it off. And the idea behind it is we’re sort of like a nostalgia kind of podcast. We go back and watch things that we liked growing up or we wanted to watch growing up to see if they still kind of hold up today. And it’s been a blast, we do it every couple weeks and you know, we watch films usually on our own and then do the podcast at the shop. And yeah, just having a podcast that was recorded in a video store was sort of a bit of an angle that we had too. I don’t think there’s too many of those out there, but you know, the video store part is not gonna happen anymore, obviously, but we’re still gonna continue to go over at my house. So we just have so much fun doing it. It’s a blast.

Scarecrow Video also has a movie show on YouTube recorded in their video store.

Yeah. Scarecrow is an awesome store. It’s like the it’s like easily the best shop I’ve ever been in or ever seen. It’s so crazy, just a massive house that’s full of the anything you can ever think of. I’m really happy that they’ve changed their business model, and able to still stay alive, cause they’re an incredible store.

Do you think there’s still a future for video stores or at least physical media in some way?

Part of me says no, just cause of what happened with us. But part of me says yeah, because seeing the reaction of people coming in and being so happy to get whatever they can, this movie and that movie for their collection and stuff, because you know, physical media is like, if you have it, the streamers can’t take it away. So for me, I like to think that there’s still a good value towards physical media. But as a business, it’s hard to say, just cause I see where all the other stores are at, basically struggling and hoping to keep open. But you never know, vinyl had such a great resurgence and it’s a viable business now, but it’s just really hard to say at this point.

And I wish I could have stayed open long enough to find out. But yeah, part of me says yes, part of me says no. I’ve never had a movie collection at home because I’ve always had the shop for so long. I’m looking up at my shelf where I’ve got like 150 pieces I kept from the shop plus now I’m like thinking, oh, what do I need now? So I’m gonna be the guy going and buying stuff. So I think there is a little bit of life left in physical media. I love physical media myself. I just love everything about it, the packaging, just having it, putting it in the machine, all that kind stuff rather than just scrolling around and pushing a button. There’s really no joy in that, but who knows? I’m hoping there’s a bit of a bit of life left in it.

I wonder if the future is, like Vinyl Stores, about selling instead of renting movies.

There is one left here in town Videomatica which used to be the best rental store, but they scaled down, there’s just doing sales down. I think they’re doing okay. Cause yeah, I’ve noticed like in the last couple years, people wanna buy more than rent. They wanna own it. And we’re gonna keep the website going and do sales from the website. don’t know how it’s gonna go cause there’s a lot of places out there that you can buy stuff from, but we’re gonna sell, we got a lot of like t-shirts and mugs from the shop that we’re gonna sell as well, so hopefully I’ll keep my foot in that pond for a little while longer anyways, but yeah, we’ll see what happens I guess.