I Really, Really Miss Video Stores

Tonight I said something about how I'm mad at technology for murdering video stores. Then Scott kind of made fun of that statement by telling me I should blame other vague concepts for ruining specific things (or something like that; I honestly didn't really understand what he was talking about). I don't think he realized how much I meant what I said. Directly or indirectly, the internet and other advancing technologies are to blame for the death of the video store and, while there are some left, they're few and far between and difficult to find.
Looking at lists of movies on Netflix will never match browsing through video stores, especially independently owned video stores that rented out all kinds of stuff you'd never hear of otherwise, movies created for the nichest of markets and bootleg videos of concerts, music videos, old timey burlesque stuff and other few-of-a-kind delights.
No matter how awful a mood I'm in, the one thing guaranteed to cheer me up is going to a video store (preferrably with a friend or two but it also works if I go alone, just not as well) and just looking around, seeing what's there, finding things I'd like to watch and making fun of movies that look terrible.
Some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around video stores (which probably just says more about what kind of child I was than anything else): the talking Frankenhooker box; my older brother covering my eyes and walking me into the kids' section because I was afraid of the Child's Play 2 standee right next to the store's entrance; choosing a movie, remembering all the parts I hated about that movie and changing my mind, thus making every trip to rent a movie a ridiculously long ordeal that I'm sure frustrated my parents; looking at all the posters on the walls advertising movies that nobody thinks about anymore (Repossessed, for instance, and some movie where groom who I think is Dudley Moore has two brides).
In fact, I think the decor of the video stores I grew up in heavily influenced my design aesthetic: a house isn't a home if entire walls aren't covered in posters.
Video stores were my Valhalla and technology killed them. The internet stole my safehaven. (Insert third melodramatic sentence expressing a similar sentiment to the previous two here.) Sure, I love a lot of what the internet has to offer (the fact that it's made music videos easy to find now that Music Television has stopped having anything to do with music, for instance, and the fact that I can research bands and actors and such without having to fruitlessly wade through back issues of magazines at the library) but it's sad that video stores had to be a casualty in the abundance of accessible information.
I want video stores back.

Be seeing you.
-Sally