In May 2025, financial media company MarketBeat released a survey it conducted of over 3,000 Virginians aged 45 and above. The survey asked them which stores they grew up with that they were feeling nostalgic for. Number one was Blockbuster and number 4 was Hollywood Video.
Many of us continue to prefer physical media when it comes to things such as books and music. Are we ready for the return of physical movies and the video rental store?
Streaming platforms bring digital TV and movies into our homes, much like Blu-ray and DVDs did through chain stores and rental kiosks like RedBox. But I still have fond memories of going to a video store, perusing the aisles, talking to a store employee and bringing home a movie or two for the night.
It wouldn’t be so far out of left field for a store like this to reappear in the Fredericksburg region. Especially when we’ve had a burst of independent bookstores, vinyl record stores and video arcades popping up in the last few years. Just like malls, like Spotsylvania Towne Center, were supposed to go extinct due to online purchasing and the pandemic, a customer base has since emerged that could make the return of this commercial institution sustainable.
Sustainable doesn’t mean it would ever return to its heyday in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The same can be said of other stores specializing in physical media. Any potential movie rental store is unlikely to be a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video chain, but it could potentially be a viable third space for the community.
Take Reclaim Arcade, for example: it first opened in 2018 as a VHS library-style business and quickly pivoted to a video game and pinball arcade that draws crowds not just for the games but also for events such as birthday parties and live music. Because of their growing customer base, the arcade has not only been successful but also expanded. While Reclaim no longer loans out its video collection, manager Paula Epperson said they are often asked about renting the videos in their largely decorative collection.
Bumrush Vinyl has also continued to grow a sustainable customer base since opening its storefront in March 2025. According to owner Shaw Hargett, Bumrush started out as an online store (a pretty common practice these days) before obtaining a storefront that offers not just vinyl records but also CDs and cassettes.
To be honest, vinyl records never truly went away, and while CDs surpassed vinyl in popularity in the 1990s, it has always been a staple of underground punk and hip hop. In 2019, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that vinyl sales had surpassed CD sales. The format gained significant ground during the pandemic but remains pricey because of the limited number of pressing plants.
Hargett said they do get a number of people who ask about video formats, but more often from those looking to sell, not buy. The owner also said that while he’s not familiar with the market he speculates that a video store would find it difficult to maintain profit margins if that’s all it sells.
It doesn’t take much speculation to imagine such a store offering more than just the sale or rental of movies. It would likely also have to sell movie-related merchandise and memorabilia to attract a crowd. One only has to visit Gateway Comics and Toys to see that a business operating in this day and age needs to expand its offerings beyond its main focus.
“I have seen more of a comeback with physical music media and less with video media,” said Hargett. “Not to say it couldn’t work, but I would think the video model would work better within an existing business.”
So, from these speculations alone, I think there is demand, but at a smaller level. More likely, it’ll be a mom-and-pop kind of store that will have to build its customer base like anything else.
Places like Reclaim Arcade, Bumrush Vinyl and Gateway Toys and Comics, offer what some call a “third-place”. Somewhere aside from home and work where people can congregate and engage socially and perhaps learn about new media offerings they may not discover on their own because an algorithm is curating their exposure.
We have lost a few things in this age of streaming. But in the last few years, there’s been a wave of people of all ages seeking to reclaim what was lost. Not merely due to nostalgia but to get what one can’t on an online streaming platform: a face-to-face community.
So are we ready for a potential return of the movie rental store? If not now, it may be sooner than you’d think.
