Last Blockbuster cashes in on status
BEND, Ore. — There are challenges that come with running the last Blockbuster Video on the planet.
The computer system must be rebooted using floppy disks that only the general manager knows how to use. The dot-matrix printer broke, so employees write out membership cards by hand. And the store’s business transactions are backed up on a reel-to-reel tape that can’t be replaced because Radio Shack went out of business.
Yet none of that has kept this humble franchise in an Oregon strip mall from thriving as the advent of on-demand movie-streaming laid waste all around it. When a Blockbuster in Australia shuts its doors for the last time March 31, this Bend, Oregon, store will be the only one left on earth.
“It’s pure stubbornness, for one. We didn’t want to give in,” said general manager Sandi Harding, who has worked at the franchise for 15 years and receives a lot of the credit for keeping it alive well past its expiration date. “We did everything we could to cut costs and keep ourselves relevant.”
Central Ohio lost its last Blockbuster store several years ago, but five Family Video stores remain in the Columbus area — at 3768 E. Main St., 5370 Sullivant Ave., 5540 N. High St., 2760 E. Dublin-granville Rd., and 5304 N. Hamilton Rd.
The Oregon store was once one of five Blockbusters owned by the same couple, Ken and Debbie Tisher, in three central Oregon towns. But by last year, the Bend franchise was the last
Blockbuster standing.
A tight budget meant no money to update the surviving store. That’s paying off now with a nostalgia factor that stops first-time visitors of a certain age in their tracks: the popcorn ceilings, low fluorescent lighting, wire metal video racks and the ubiquitous yellow-andblue ticket stub logo that was a cultural touchstone for a generation.
“Most people, I think, when they think about renting videos — if they’re the right age — they don’t remember the movie that they went to pick, but they remember who they went with and that freedom of walking the aisles,” said Zeke Kamm, a local resident who is making a documentary about the store called “The Last Blockbuster” with a friend.
Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in 2010, and by 2014, all corporate-owned stores had shuttered. That left locally owned franchises to fend for themselves, and one by one, they closed.
When stores in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska, shut down last summer, Bend’s Blockbuster was the only U.S. location left.
Tourists started stopping by to snap selfies, and business picked up. Harding ordered up blue-and-yellow sweat shirts, T-shirts, cups, magnets, bumper stickers, hats and stocking caps from local vendors emblazoned with the words “The Last Blockbuster in America,” and they flew off the shelves.
Then, this month, she got a phone call: The world’s only other Blockbuster, in Perth, Australia, would soon close its doors. A new T-shirt order went out — this time with the slogan “The Last Blockbuster on the Planet” — and the store is already getting a new wave of selfiesnapping visitors from as far away as Europe and Asia.
The Bend store doesn’t seem to be in danger of closing any time soon.
Recently, Harding has Returned movies wait to be shelved at the Oregon Blockbuster. Customers say they like to pick out older movies that they can’t find on streaming services.
noticed another type of customer that’s giving her hope: a new generation of kids dragged in by their nostalgic parents who later leave happy, holding stacks of rented movies and piles of candy.