VanBuren: Celebrating the magic of the lost movie rental store

I’m not one to disparage modernity, but it’s changed the landscape of so many aspects of human… I’m not one to disparage modernity, but it’s changed the landscape of so many aspects of human interaction that it’s hard not to be a little wistful. In a time when you no longer need to even leave the house to rent a movie, one beautiful little slice of Americana suffers more than any sense of nostalgia: the local video store. You know you had one growing up, before Blockbuster came to your town and put it out of business. It was a place with a willfully quaint name like ‘Hometown Video,’ packed with wire shelves of VHS tapes in plastic squeeze boxes. There were worn cardboard display cases of Super Nintendo games and, if you were lucky, an adult video section tempting your adolescent curiosity from behind a set of wooden swinging doors, like some kind of pornographic saloon. Of course, 15 years later and the Hometown Videos are all but extinct, wiped out by national chains with in-stock guarantees ‘mdash; corporate giants that are now themselves feeling the pinch from people who rent their movies on the Internet or their cable box. It’s hardly news that small, independent businesses lose out to the giants ‘mdash; just watch ‘Be Kind Rewind’ or, if you’ve got the stomach for it, ‘You’ve Got Mail.’ What might surprise you, though, is that not all of them have closed. Not yet. Six years ago today, a member of a dying breed was miraculously born. Its name is Dreaming Ant, and its home is the almost comically cramped back corner of a Crazy Mocha coffee shop in Bloomfield. The location seems like an obvious choice ‘mdash; Bloomfield already being the stomping grounds of young, indie types living on a steady diet of cigarettes and bike rides. Though it was a wise choice of location for a rental store specializing in independent, classic, gay and foreign DVDs, it isn’t only for any one niche of people. Unless, of course, that niche is people who love movies. I could tell you all about Dreaming Ant. About the wire racks bursting with piles of DVD cases in categories like ‘Cult Cinema’ and ‘Superhero Movies.’ About the free this or the cheap that, or the 54C that will take you straight to the Liberty Avenue Crazy Mocha that houses this subversive little wonder. But I’d rather let you find out for yourself, because it’s worth discovering. Dreaming Ant is a victim of convenience. Its short-lived Oakland location closed almost two months ago, according to the Web site, because after two years it had yet to turn a profit. The walk to Craig Street was apparently too far to attract the student crowd, particularly when forced to compete with services like Netflix and iTunes that allow movie geeks ‘mdash; sedentary by definition ‘mdash; to indulge in their obsessions without leaving the apartment. Still, this isn’t a sad story. It isn’t an advertisement, either. Dreaming Ant is a sign, though ‘mdash; a testament to a nostalgic icon that has yet to completely fade into obsolescence. As of today, it’s proof that for six years and counting we can still create that oh-so-human experience of going to a private little place where we share our passions. That you can tilt your head sideways like you used to, skimming row after row of art you’ve yet to light upon, beating on with your boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. So there it is ‘mdash; that’s just for you. It might be Dreaming Ant’s birthday, but you get the gift: the message to go, the advice to get on that 54C and discover something new and shocking, something energized, something at once progressive and sentimental. You can thank me for this later.