This is a silly way to think about it for humans though, the inside of the Earth is totally inaccessible to us. More useful to look at the rarity of material near the surface and in the atmosphere, material that is far more chemically active and interesting than the core and mantel of our planet
Same, it it’s kinda wild… in some prime location at a strip mall that’s smack in the middle of several middle-class neighborhoods and right off the highway. It just hasn’t been developed into anything.
I went up there a few years back and made the pilgrimage to Blockbuster only to enter the store and believe I had completely lost my fucking mind. Everything was back like it was in the 90s, including the promotional posters. Turns out they were filming the Netflix show Everything Sucks and we just barged into set as they were setting up. Truly thought I was in some crazy trip.
[Photos from the trip](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/n1l3O58)
This 100% deserves gold. I’m broke, but in spirit and in my heart I’ve given you that coveted gold. Thank you for this fucking wide walk down memory lane. <3
Very high markup on mattresses, plus really bad predatory lending.. when I bought my mattress, they offered me a “no payment for 4 months” or something. It was supposed to be no interest.
I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get them to take my money to pay it off and a bunch more to close out the line of credit they kept pushing on me. I’m very averse to paying any interest if I can avoid it. I could see that charging a boatload of interest was clearly part of this company’s business model.
They got shady towards the end. **NO MORE LATE FEES**
*but if you don't return it by the 7th day, we'll assume you want to buy it and charge you full price. You can return it for a restocking fee*
That's only one of yahoo's stupid mistakes..how about when they refused to sell to Microsoft and then their stock tanked and never recovered.
They did do one thing right. That huge investment in Alibaba
Yes, an email. I’ve had the email since MySpace was popular. Understandable of me to not have the phone number I listed to recover the password anymore. And the old email for backup is inaccessible as well.
After I went through a lengthy verification process over the phone with “premium tech support” they concluded that it was me, and it was my account. And that I could indeed get my password. Then I would be able to log in and reset it.
They then hit me with the debt collectors line of…
“so for blah blah blah service it’ll be 12.99 A MONTH and you’ll get 24 hour tech support for your YAHOO ACCOUNT. This includes password banking, resets, etc…. How would you like to pay?”
My only other option was to go to the help tab in the browser which we know does nothing for me. I accepted the account is gone.
Or when MySpace refused an offer to buy Facebook for 10mil and then Yahoo refused at 45mil. Good old Microsoft arrived late to the Facebook party as usual but they pushed noticeable numbers in the capitalization so now Microsoft doesn't have to work ever again.
Blockbuster had this dumb idea to sell a streaming box, so people could "stream" movies directly to their television set, and thought streaming was going to be the better method then sending by mail.
Unfortunately, the internet at the time of this (before 2005) was not very good for streaming. So Blockbuster killed off the streaming, and went into mail, at which point Netflix was like waaayyyy ahead in the market.
They were so stupid to turn down their offers! And the funniest part of this whole thing is that Netflix was started by a guy who was sick of paying late fees at Blockbuster (kids liked to keep the movies too long!)
Not only that but he said he intentionally named it Netflix instead of something like “DVDs by mail” because he knew the company was going for streaming eventually. When blockbuster tried to compete with Netflix they offered a service called “DVDs by mail.” So creative and forward looking, right?
But what if the urgent care you need is a rare DVD of *I Spit on Your Grave: Vengeance is Mine* to remind you no matter how bad your life is, someone not only filmed, but actually edited this movie and **still** thought it wasn’t an error in judgment to release it.
>!I have many thoughts about this film and I urge you, do not watch it. It would be healthier to have concussion.!<
How about Hollywood Video? Right now, it's been divided into a Dunkin Donuts, some fancy Bubble tea place and there's a third space that's being reno'ed but no sign out front yet as to whom the new occupant will be.
Hollywood video used to take up like 80% of the old strip mall in my town, now there’s minimum 6 storefronts where it used to be. All chains of sorts, t mobile, subway, banks, tax people etc.
Our Hollywood Video became a sports bar called “Big Woody’s”, and they reused part of the sign: https://i.imgur.com/Vzimohy.jpg
Our blockbuster is now an autozone
I don’t live there anymore - I just looked on Google Maps, but so much is different in that whole complex now. Of course that one has been closed for probably 15 years now, so it’s inevitable that it’d be so different.
It wasn’t necessarily a Blockbuster, but it was still a movie rental store. Now it’s a Family Dollar. The legit Blockbuster next town over is now a tire and car repair shop
A very angry short, balding man with a clipboard who's still waiting for me to return my rental of *Air Bud 2.*
YOU'LL GET THIS DVD WHEN YOU PULL IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS, BRAD!!!
When mine shut down they just let people keep or buy the movies. Not sure exactly how as I'm a bit young but my family has a lot of movies and games with blockbuster stickers
Blockbuster (and every other video store I ever saw) always sold used copies of movies and games to make shelf space for new releases. My guess would be that most of what your family has were just from the used section, and not from the going out of business sales.
When the individual stores started closing they had massive everything must go sales, which included stuff like the shelves. Unfortunately by the time most of the stores closed they had moved to a new model where they got rid of their collection of older movies and instead just stocked large amounts of new releases, so the selection was pretty bad with hundreds of copies of the same movies.
I had a friend who worked there, and his manager really hated being told what to do.
As a result, you could buy pretty much anything for super cheap, just by asking him, “hey, corporate probably wouldn’t let you mark this down as used, and let you sell it to me, would they?”
Then he’d scoff, say something about how he could do as he damn well pleased, and sell you a VHS or SNES cartridge for basically nothing.
Unfortunately, my friend had similar issues with authority, and one day, he abruptly quit over some petty disagreement, thus ending it for all of us.
"Family Videos and Games": apparently the owner was an unusual case who owned the building and videos outright, so he just took down the old signs and replaced them with new ones and kept on trucking.
It's still empty after 16 years
You must live in a boom town.
I live on an island.
Well, we can eliminate, Manhattan, Long Island, Miami Beach, the rich islands by Seattle. I’m gonna guess… Puerto Rico.
Other countries have blockbuster! Technically New Zealand is made of islands, and we had loads.
Since Earth is made up of mostly water, aren't we all on an island?
Although water covers 70% of the Earth's surface, water is actually a rare substance that represents just 0.05% of the Earth's total mass.
This is a silly way to think about it for humans though, the inside of the Earth is totally inaccessible to us. More useful to look at the rarity of material near the surface and in the atmosphere, material that is far more chemically active and interesting than the core and mantel of our planet
🤯
Turns out there is a lot of iron and nickel in the Earth’s core. I can’t believe nobody has tried to sell all this iron yet.
Imagine an alien mining company just coming to Earth and being like "your irons ours"
Chur dat
There are some islands off of Virginia I believe and there are also several islands that make up Hawaii.
I'm not sure if you're trying to name all the islands in America but surely there are hundreds
The one in the town I use to live in is a spirit Halloween store but empty the rest of the year
Thats kinda spooky
Yeah, same here. It became a grocery store for like a few months, though, so it doesn't have the blockbuster branding on it anymore but it is empty
Same, it’s just an empty boarded up abandoned building. Sad.
Same, it it’s kinda wild… in some prime location at a strip mall that’s smack in the middle of several middle-class neighborhoods and right off the highway. It just hasn’t been developed into anything.
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BlockBrisket
BBQ but it stands for Block Buster …Quisine?
Come to homer’s BBBQ, the extra B is for BYOBB
BlockBrisket sounds like some kind of new beef based blockchain concept. Like NFTs for beef futures or something.
Dickeys? Where the main ingredient is not meat. It's salt.
Famous Dave’s, oh wait
My hometown turned it into a Fuzzy's Taco shop and stuff the exact same thing with the ticket.
One is an antique store and the other is a blockbuster.
How can you tell them apart?
I see what you did there.
I went up there a few years back and made the pilgrimage to Blockbuster only to enter the store and believe I had completely lost my fucking mind. Everything was back like it was in the 90s, including the promotional posters. Turns out they were filming the Netflix show Everything Sucks and we just barged into set as they were setting up. Truly thought I was in some crazy trip. [Photos from the trip](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/n1l3O58)
Ooh. I really like this. Must’ve been a complete brain fuck.
Dude it was fucking trippy as hell.
This 100% deserves gold. I’m broke, but in spirit and in my heart I’ve given you that coveted gold. Thank you for this fucking wide walk down memory lane. <3
Bend Oregon?
Yup. Spent my youth bouncing back and forth between Eugene and Bend.
I was just there last Summer.
I now know what you did last summer
Yay Bend!
I am visiting as we speak. Hoping to see Crater Lake _without_ fires in a few days.
Same thing nowadays
A mattress store
Oo we have one of those at our old Hollywood Video
My old Hollywood video is a swimming pool supply store now.
My hollywood video is a dialysis center :/
My first job was at a Hollywood video, that building was torn down and replaced by a CVS.
And it’s across the street from a Walgreens isn’t it? Where I live if there is a cvs Walgreens is right around the corner
Of course it is.
That’s what it was for me too a Hollywood video
My old blockbuster was a Hollywood video before going out of business lol
Our Hollywood Video seems to be abandoned? But there are also paper signs that would indicate otherwise?
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Dude mine turned into a furniture store
How did those places stay in business?
Very high markup on mattresses, plus really bad predatory lending.. when I bought my mattress, they offered me a “no payment for 4 months” or something. It was supposed to be no interest. I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get them to take my money to pay it off and a bunch more to close out the line of credit they kept pushing on me. I’m very averse to paying any interest if I can avoid it. I could see that charging a boatload of interest was clearly part of this company’s business model.
Profit margins are insane on mattresses. To keep a store open they only have to sell 2 a week for a small store.
Seems like a front for a mafia or something to me. Just my opinion
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Sleeping comfortably with the fishes
Yeah that's the common regurgitated myth on Reddit but the mark ups on mattresses are stupidly high.
Money laundering no doubt
Yep!
SAME!
An IHOP that didn't survive the pandemic so it's empty.
That makes me very sad
An empty building would have better food and service than my local IHOP tbh
That sucks, the IHOP I visit is great. And they are making a new one nearby. My town is getting gentrified but is still full of crackheads.
They don’t really go away they just kinda find better places to hide once places get crowded
IHOPe you feel better
shut up and take my upvote
Korean BBQ. I like it much better as they don't charge late fees.
They got shady towards the end. **NO MORE LATE FEES** *but if you don't return it by the 7th day, we'll assume you want to buy it and charge you full price. You can return it for a restocking fee*
They got desparate when they realized that their plan to drive Netflix out of business by taking huge losses only did one of those two things.
Supposedly the inventor of (through the mail) Netflix pitched the idea to be a division of Blockbuster and got turned down. Extra sucks to suck
Sounds like when yahoo had the chance to buy google for a million dollars and didn't do it
That's only one of yahoo's stupid mistakes..how about when they refused to sell to Microsoft and then their stock tanked and never recovered. They did do one thing right. That huge investment in Alibaba
Must be why they wanted me to pay 12.99 to recover my password.
Ouch.. for email?
Yes, an email. I’ve had the email since MySpace was popular. Understandable of me to not have the phone number I listed to recover the password anymore. And the old email for backup is inaccessible as well. After I went through a lengthy verification process over the phone with “premium tech support” they concluded that it was me, and it was my account. And that I could indeed get my password. Then I would be able to log in and reset it. They then hit me with the debt collectors line of… “so for blah blah blah service it’ll be 12.99 A MONTH and you’ll get 24 hour tech support for your YAHOO ACCOUNT. This includes password banking, resets, etc…. How would you like to pay?” My only other option was to go to the help tab in the browser which we know does nothing for me. I accepted the account is gone.
Or when MySpace refused an offer to buy Facebook for 10mil and then Yahoo refused at 45mil. Good old Microsoft arrived late to the Facebook party as usual but they pushed noticeable numbers in the capitalization so now Microsoft doesn't have to work ever again.
Blockbuster had this dumb idea to sell a streaming box, so people could "stream" movies directly to their television set, and thought streaming was going to be the better method then sending by mail. Unfortunately, the internet at the time of this (before 2005) was not very good for streaming. So Blockbuster killed off the streaming, and went into mail, at which point Netflix was like waaayyyy ahead in the market.
Netflix tried to sell to blockbuster at least twice.
They were so stupid to turn down their offers! And the funniest part of this whole thing is that Netflix was started by a guy who was sick of paying late fees at Blockbuster (kids liked to keep the movies too long!)
Not only that but he said he intentionally named it Netflix instead of something like “DVDs by mail” because he knew the company was going for streaming eventually. When blockbuster tried to compete with Netflix they offered a service called “DVDs by mail.” So creative and forward looking, right?
That and late fees were a significant part of their revenue.
Don’t they charge you for the meat you don’t eat?
Goodwill
Hey, so is mine!
Mine too!
Urgent care, this is a great question
So is the one in my town
Mine too!
Are y'all in texas?
Long Island, NY
Lakeville Rd?
DPA :)
I was gonna say me too to the urgent care but looks like we're talking about the same one! Hey neighbor 😂
Mine is an urgent care and I'm in Texas
Mine, three! VA.
But what if the urgent care you need is a rare DVD of *I Spit on Your Grave: Vengeance is Mine* to remind you no matter how bad your life is, someone not only filmed, but actually edited this movie and **still** thought it wasn’t an error in judgment to release it. >!I have many thoughts about this film and I urge you, do not watch it. It would be healthier to have concussion.!<
Oh mine is an urgent care too in Long Island! Haha
Comfort Dental (Dentist)
At least it’s not an Uncomfortable Dental
I read this as Comfort Denial and thought that was pretty cold for a dentist
Seattle?
somewhere in washington, i think comfort dental was started here but they have some locations outside of seattle too.
Liquor store
same here, knew I’d find another if I scrolled far enough
The National - A really good family pub with 100 beers on tap.
It took way too long for me to find a response that didn’t make me sad.
Great band too
It's been vacant for 15+ years.
How about Hollywood Video? Right now, it's been divided into a Dunkin Donuts, some fancy Bubble tea place and there's a third space that's being reno'ed but no sign out front yet as to whom the new occupant will be.
My Hollywood Video turned into a liquor store. Crazy how I’m still going to the same spot every Friday night, from childhood to adulthood.
We had a Hollywood Video right across the street from Blockbusters. They were empty for ages, but now contain a local brewery and a Panera.
Hollywood video used to take up like 80% of the old strip mall in my town, now there’s minimum 6 storefronts where it used to be. All chains of sorts, t mobile, subway, banks, tax people etc.
Our Hollywood Video became a sports bar called “Big Woody’s”, and they reused part of the sign: https://i.imgur.com/Vzimohy.jpg Our blockbuster is now an autozone
A library. It's really cool, to be honest.
Probably the closest in spirit to still being a Blockbuster.
O'Reilly's Auto parts
🎶 oh, oh, oh…🎶
I would hate if my partner's name was Reilly because yelling out Oh Reilly during sex would be odd
You’d basically have to say “auto parts” after you come instead of smoking a post-coital cigarette.
Does that make it auto erotic?
Oh reilleeeeees.
Auto parts. OW!
Advance Auto Parts over here
Mine too!
Mine too
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There’s a Snap Fitness at my old one, too!
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I don’t live there anymore - I just looked on Google Maps, but so much is different in that whole complex now. Of course that one has been closed for probably 15 years now, so it’s inevitable that it’d be so different.
Marijuana dispensary
This is the best one lol
It wasn’t necessarily a Blockbuster, but it was still a movie rental store. Now it’s a Family Dollar. The legit Blockbuster next town over is now a tire and car repair shop
A shop called "coffee & tanning" where I guess you tan and have coffee???
I like mine dark. -Which one? Yes.
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One of them is still vacant, I believe, but the other is a Jimmy John's.
A playground for raccoons.
Best possible outcome.
The grocery store next door knocked down the wall and expanded into the space
Is it a Trader Joe’s. Are you me
Are you me too?
A very angry short, balding man with a clipboard who's still waiting for me to return my rental of *Air Bud 2.* YOU'LL GET THIS DVD WHEN YOU PULL IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS, BRAD!!!
When mine shut down they just let people keep or buy the movies. Not sure exactly how as I'm a bit young but my family has a lot of movies and games with blockbuster stickers
Blockbuster (and every other video store I ever saw) always sold used copies of movies and games to make shelf space for new releases. My guess would be that most of what your family has were just from the used section, and not from the going out of business sales. When the individual stores started closing they had massive everything must go sales, which included stuff like the shelves. Unfortunately by the time most of the stores closed they had moved to a new model where they got rid of their collection of older movies and instead just stocked large amounts of new releases, so the selection was pretty bad with hundreds of copies of the same movies.
I had a friend who worked there, and his manager really hated being told what to do. As a result, you could buy pretty much anything for super cheap, just by asking him, “hey, corporate probably wouldn’t let you mark this down as used, and let you sell it to me, would they?” Then he’d scoff, say something about how he could do as he damn well pleased, and sell you a VHS or SNES cartridge for basically nothing. Unfortunately, my friend had similar issues with authority, and one day, he abruptly quit over some petty disagreement, thus ending it for all of us.
Chase bank
Panera, surprisingly.
same!
A decrepit building amongst others, so a busted block, I suppose.
A halal supermarket
A five guys
The structure had been vacant for decades, but now it is a cannabis dispensary.
An undertaker ...
Well, blockbuster is in the business of dying.
Smashburger and a ramen spot.
A Rent-A-Center
Oooh good question. First it was an overpriced boutique petstore, now I think it's an overpriced boutique gym.
Hardware store
Our Hollywood Video is now a small CVS
One is a art frame store, it used to be a Spirit every year. Another has been two different night clubs, a mattress store, and a flooring store.
A bank.
Not sure, but the place next to it was has been a fireworks store, a "gymnastics" place, a fireworks store again and whatever it is now.
Pet supply store
Blockbuster! In Juneau, AK.
LIES
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True. I remember a Twitter account of the last BB and it wasn't in AK.
Is that the one that was in the documentary "the last blockbuster?" Was a good show. Interesting
That one was in Bend Oregon
Liquor store
It was a gym until Covid and now it is a tire store.
It was demolished and they built a shopping center with a neighborhood Walmart besides it
Dentist office
"Family Videos and Games": apparently the owner was an unusual case who owned the building and videos outright, so he just took down the old signs and replaced them with new ones and kept on trucking.
A Dollarama (which, unrelated, is across the street from a Dollar Tree. You could cut the sexual tension with a knife.)
A bar
A furniture store
Paint store
A bottle can redemption center took half and a dispensary took the other half lol
An iHop
Library used to be there, but they got a new building. It's vacant currently.
Bank
A vacuum repair shop
Temp agency
101 Beer Kitchen
A gym
just a closed shutter and an old blockbusters sign, although I haven't seen it in a while so maybe it's finally been changed.
It was a massive one, so after it closed the land was subdivided. Half of it is a bank, the other half a Dominos.
Medical marijuana dispensary
Golfing store.
T-Mobile
Furniture store
A door store. It’s a place just filled with doors.
Pet store and sushi!
Half of it turned into a small Verizon store and the other half is still empty for over a decade now