The Last Blockbuster Video Store May Be Coming to Your Town
It’s a well-known pop culture fact that the last Blockbuster Video store is located in the town of Bend, Oregon. Each year, thousands of movie lovers from all over the world make the pilgrimage to Bend to shop, take photos and relive their memories of renting out those white, blue and yellow cases. But now, Blockbuster fans who can’t make the trip to Bend may still have a way to visit the beloved video store — the staff of the last Blockbuster have developed a pop-up mini-Blockbuster, called The Blockbuster Experience, which they plan to take on a national tour of comic cons and other locations.
Gerald Strauss
At the Rhode Island Comic Con on Nov. 2, Sandi Harding, the general manager of the Bend, Oregon, Blockbuster, told ReMIND that The Blockbuster Experience was created with “the hope that we can bring the experience [of the last Blockbuster] to those who can’t come to Bend to see me.” She noted that this was the third convention the pop-up had visited so far, but there are plans to appear at more conventions in the future.
The pop-up includes rows and rows of Blockbuster DVDs and VHS tapes, arranged on classic wire racks, alongside TVs playing the latest releases, just like in the old days. Visitors can pose for photos, buy Blockbuster T-shirts and other merch, play around with ’90s tech like a VHS tape rewinder, or just bask in the experience of picking up tapes and remembering life back when no weekend was complete without a trip to the video store.
Gabrielle Moss
The pop-up has also become a place for fans to share those memories. “I love the fact that people come in here and tell me their stories,” says Harding. “There are so many people that are willing to be vulnerable and come in and tell me about their Friday nights, past loved ones. I had a couple in here the other day, and she was very teary-eyed. They had met and got married in a Blockbuster. And I just hear so many wonderful family stories.”
As for life in the last Blockbuster Video store on Earth (an Australian location, the second-to-last Blockbuster, closed in 2019)? “We get people in there every single day from all over the world,” says Harding. “It’s just amazing.” The store also receives frequent donations of VHS tapes and DVDs from fans. “Physical media is hard to get, as most people know,” notes Harding. “And so it’s nice to have people willing to share what they have with us, to replenish the shelves.”
Gerald Strauss
But aside from international travelers and shipments of donated VHS tapes from all over the world, life at Blockbuster is “just like it used to be,” says Harding. “We still rent movies every single day. The only difference now is that we have merchandise in this store, and we sell it online. My mom actually came out of retirement [to help], and we ship all the online orders out of our back room.”
However, when it comes to rentals, the last Blockbuster is squarely in the modern era. Harding reports that the summer horror hit Longlegs is among the most-rented DVDs of the moment, and customers are eagerly anticipating the release of Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Going to Blockbuster now, she says, is “even more of an experience, because we have less movies on the shelves. And like I said, physical media is hard to get, so we have less movies. So it’s more of a dig through the drop box every Friday.”
Harding is eager to take The Blockbuster Experience to more towns and connect with more people around the world who still want to make it a Blockbuster night. Talking to fans, she says, “makes you remember why I am still doing what I do every day.”
Fans can see where The Blockbuster Experience will pop up next on the Bend store’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
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