DES MOINES, Iowa — It's not quite the ending Jon Fridley had imagined for The Video Warehouse in Des Moines. Fridley, manager and part owner of the beloved institution, will stop offering rentals on January 10 and eventually close it's doors, for good, some time in February.
"Some emotions started to set in. Not much time to think about it too much. There's a lot of years wrapped up into it," Fridley said as he reflected on the past 34 years.
Fridley was there when the video store open. After stepping away in the mid 1990s, he went back and has been there there for the past 17 years.
While the store had managed to navigate changes in the industry, like the growing popularity of online streaming services, the pandemic delivered the final blow.
Fewer movies were made and released in 2020 than in recent years.. "Without that we don’t get the new releases we need. [It] puts us in a spot without the good new product to be able to offer to the customers," Fridley said.
Long-time customers are going to miss their weekly visits to the video store.
"It’s been a hallmark for the community. We hate to see it go, but sometimes business have to deal with what the economy gives them right now," said Harry Flipping, who said he's been renting movies at The Video Warehouse for three decades.
"They have my classics here. I can see a classic here, a 50s movie, a 60s movie...something like that. I like the variety," Flipping said.
Chris Deiter, who stops by every Friday to rent movies for the weekend feels the same way. "I‘m surprised that hey lasted this long, but I’ll miss them," he said.
While most of the rentals these days are DVDs and Blue-Rays, Fridley says that about once a week (twice on a good week) someone still rents one of the few remaining movies the store only carries on VHS.