It’s a distant 90s memory that disappeared in England: the video club. One such store has reopened in Brighton, right in front of Dieppe. A real journey through time.
One-way ticket from the 90s in Brighton
From our hazy memories of the nineties, sometimes images of video clubs resurfaced where we rented VHS tapes. If there are only a handful of these nostalgia left in France today, they have completely disappeared on the other side of the Channel. Likewise, there is only one Blockbuster movie rental store in the United States today, when the chain had about nine thousand stores nationwide in the mid-nineties. Video on demand service Netflix has also made a film on the subject called The Last Blockbuster available on its platform.
A similarly renovated video club
It’s also Netflix that just opened three real video clubs in the United Kingdom, one of which is before us in Brighton. On the occasion of the release of the Fear Street trilogy, the first installment of which is a fun homage to the horror movies of the nineties, the American company has made it big by reimagining the video store like ‘You Could See Them Twenty’. or thirty years ago. In particular, there are many vintage VHS tapes, including horror movies, posters, badges and stickers bearing the great successes of the time or even a mannequin of an actual retro photo booth.
In Brighton, Shayside lies in the heart of the Video Lens district, a set of winding streets where antique dealers, jewelers and other trendy shops meet. Since July 2, nostalgia for a carefree era and the youngest flock out there to immerse themselves in a retro-hype atmosphere that’s all the rage. Some “clients” rent movies there, but many pose to share photos of themselves on social networks, claiming that they traveled in time …