Alaska is the “Last Frontier” — for Blockbuster Video.
The movie rental chain closed nearly all of its stores in 2013 after going bankrupt, but nine of the 12 stores left standing in the US are staying alive — and well — in Alaska.
“I can’t tell you how many business cards I’ve given out to people ’cause they literally do not believe that I’m from Blockbuster,” store manager Kevin Daymude, who’s worked for Blockbuster’s Anchorage outpost for 26 years, told CBS News.
“’Be kind, rewind’ — we had stickers on there!” Daymude said, recalling the days of VHS.
“For a lot of people, they haven’t seen a Blockbuster store in, maybe, five or six years,” said Alan Payne, who owns the Anchorage shop and eight others around the state.
The other three surviving Blockbusters are in Texas.
But in Alaska, internet is pricey, so brick-and-mortar shops can be a better value. And in remote parts of the state, it’s also a good place to see another human being.
“I feel like a lot of the customers just want to come in and feel like they’re someone special,” Daymude told CBS. “They love the customer service, they love the interaction.”
After first opening in 1985, Blockbuster grew to 9,000 stores — opening one store every 17 hours by 1989. It eventually was killed off by mail-in and instant-streaming services, such as Netflix.
“At its peak, almost half of the families in the entire country were going in a video store every week,” said Payne. “I don’t know of any other industries that have gone from nothing, to an integral part of the culture that fast.”
Blockbuster once had the chance to buy Netflix, which was founded in 1997, for $50 million but passed on the opportunity, Business Insider reported.
But despite the growing popularity of at-home services, Payne believes there’s still a market for in-person movie browsing.
“The shopping experience of looking for a movie on a screen versus coming in here and seeing literally 10,000 titles, there’s no comparison,” said Payne.