Sigh. We had two really awesome video rental places nearby that survived until around 2008. They always had all the good indie and classic films from decades ago, but at some point in the 2000s people just stopped returning the rarer vids. I remember calling every video rental store in the area looking for Kids and Gummo and being pissed off because people who rented those movies usually just kept them and never came back.

I stopped going after the locals spots started offering to sell you a rental if it wasn't a new release or if it was a VHS (even if it was not released on DVD yet!). Not that I didn't like new releases, but sometimes you just want to watch something like Commando but you don't want to add it to your collection because maybe you'll watch it once every ten years or so. Then you go to the store and there's no Commando available because someone snatched it up. That ruined the concept of video rental for me. I would just end up ranting with the clerk for like an hour about good movies and rental blues, then head home empty handed.

Now I have Netflix -- but it doesn't even have a comment section any more. Oh well, IMDB boards ftw.