The parking lot and bike rack outside are empty, as are the DVD shelves and pop coolers and candy displays inside.
The wall of new releases — where young couples once debated the merits of chick flicks, fart jokes and thrillers — is bare as well.
Such is the scene in Blockbuster stores across the country. Once the world’s biggest movie-rental company, the familiar chain with blue and yellow signs is no more.
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Digital ones and zeros, in large part, killed this bricks and mortar video store. More than 400 of them, the last of which closed this month.
Gone, too, is the Blockbuster clerk who helped with a pick. In the online video store universe, we see what other people like and algorithms predict what we might like, based on what we’ve already seen. So withers the serendipity of the clerk who loves musicals and grinder films
Peek in the windows of these shuttered Blockbuster stores and behold artifacts of a dead business: Computers line the check-out counter, next to receipt machines and disconnected telephones and empty cash trays. The big screen displays, fixed to pillars, are dark. A lone ladder reaches for nothing.
At a freshly closed store on Queen St. E., across from an off-track betting parlour where real horses once ran, the first of what is surely more graffiti to come is tagged next to a front window. Appropriately, its indecipherable yellow message matches the defunct store’s colours.
A handyman has stuck a rip-and-tear ad next to the locked doors. Perhaps, thinks the man, scatter-brained late returners unaware of the end of Blockbuster will see his ad and are presumably equally scatter-brained when it comes to home maintenance.
Across town, at Dupont and Christie Sts., someone has missed a Wheel-Trans ride, according to a notice taped to the front door of a closed Blockbuster. Maybe a regular customer, who arrived at a regular time, only to find the door locked.
Another anachronism: the ubiquitous drop box for after-hours returns. Digital rentals simply expire. Poof.
Mourn the end of a chain, if you must. Niche neighbourhood video stores live on, their usefulness not usurped by the Internet.
Already, several º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøstores have new purposes. The store at Royal York Rd. and Dundas St. West is soon to be a Bulk Barn. An Ardene clothing store is on the way at the closed Shoppers World location on the Danforth. The Blockbuster on St. Clair Ave. W. and Alberta Ave. is serving as an Elections Ontario returning office.
And on trendy College St. in Little Italy, Rosario Marchese, NDP candidate for Trinity-Spadina, is using a former store as his campaign headquarters. It still looks like a Blockbuster, the absence of DVDs and addition of NDP orange aside. Volunteers must pass through an old security gate on the way out.
Two young men stroll past Marchese’s campaign office and there is a flicker of recognition. Of something gone and obvious.
“Yeah,†one says to the other, “the era of DVDs is over.â€
