Video Rental Store In Worcester Will Offer Entertainment, Community Media Education

WORCESTER, MA — In 1985, schlock director Larry Cohen unleashed the landmark horror-satire "The Stuff" about a delicious extraterrestrial ooze that zombifies anyone who eats it. Shady corporations sell the Stuff for profit. Everyone gobbles it up and gets addicted and brainwashed by aliens.

If you were born before approximately 1990, you may have encountered "The Stuff" on the shelf at your local video store. The iconic VHS cover bears a man's face twisted in agony, his eyes and mouth full of dribbling goo. All at once, the box causes feelings of terror, disgust, and curiosity (will mom let me rent this?).

But in an age of countless streaming services — that delete movies and cancel shows on a whim — kids today will never know the fun of visiting a video store on a Friday to find some weird treasure to bring home for the evening.

That's why several Worcester residents are in the process of opening a video rental store along June Street, hoping to offer Worcester residents the chance a new way to enjoy physical media, and much more.

Rewind Video will be the face of the Worcester Community Media Foundation, which will offer programming like media literacy classes, an internet café and youth employment opportunities. The storefront at 116 June St. will also serve as the first physical newsroom for Worcester Sucks and I Love It, the alternative news outlet founded three years ago by ex-Worcester Magazine writer Bill Shaner.

The idea for the video store grew out of another type of physical media that was thought to be dead but is now immensely popular.

Andy Jimison opened the Materia Arcade last year along June Street, offering coin-op arcade games and gaming merch. Cara Berg Powers drove by Materia one recent day and decided to stop when her daughter noticed a big Pac-Man in the window. Jimison told Powers he was moving to the next unit down, leaving a commercial space with cheap rent available.

"I thought, 'Well f--k it, I'm opening a video store,'" Powers recalls with a laugh.

Powers, born and raised in Worcester and a Clark University lecturer, has a pedigree in the local video store scene. While studying at Clark, she worked at Starship Video, once the city's largest rental store with 20,000 titles. Starship owner Robert Newton sold the store, located along Park Avenue, to Hollywood Video in 2003. It's been closed for years, now the home of a Subway and OMG! Braces.

After seeing the opportunity along June Street, Powers reached out to Shaner to discuss bigger ideas for the space. Shaner plans to hold office hours in the store, allowing the public to drop in and talk about local issues or pitch news stories. He's planning media literacy classes, journalism workshops for local students and a curated book club. Of course, newsroom visitors will be able to rent videos.

Shaner, who is 32, has few memories of going to the video store as a kid. But for elder Millennials and Gen-X, video stores were an integral part of childhood. Apart from Starship and Blockbuster, Worcester was once dotted with small mom-and-pop video rental stores. They've all been replaced by streaming platforms and faceless Redbox kiosks.

The June Street video store is in a very walkable neighborhood within throwing distance of reliable restaurants like Jason's Pizza, Loving Hut and Thai Corner. The founders envision families and film-lovers being able to walk to the store, pick up a video, and then some takeout for a new-but-old type of weekend night festivity.

Powers says the video store is a chance for kids to experience physical media, a similar appeal to Jimison's Materia and the downtown vinyl mecca Joe's Records. Rewind will curate its selection of titles, and the founders are aiming to keep about 1,000 in stock to start. There will be a mix of DVDs and VHS tapes, with a focus on endangered media — titles that either aren't available to stream or might get axed by one of the big streamers. They are also accepting donations, and have already amassed a few boxes of movies and shows already.

"We're not an algorithm," Powers said.

The store will join a small, but mighty set of video stores still open in the U.S., with many offering more than just rentals. Scarecrow Video in Seattle, the largest collection of physical media on Earth, turned into a film nonprofit several years ago under the threat of closure and now offers film education classes. The Worcester Community Media Center has also applied for nonprofit status. Video Underground in Jamaica Plain offers 17,000 titles to rent, plus a café and film screenings. Worcester is the largest city in the U.S. without a movie theater, although local groups like Cinema-Worcester are trying to change that.

Rewind is in the midst of a campaign to raise $20,000 to get the store off the ground with a tentative opening date sometime this fall. The Worcester Arts Council earlier this year awarded Shaner a $3,000 fellowship grant, which he plans to put toward the community media center.

Asked what movies or TV shows they personally want to offer at Rewind, Powers names the early 1990s Nickelodeon shows "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" and "Ghostwriter" — both unavailable to stream.

Shaner's pick is "The Stuff," which he sees as a good allegory for understanding civic affairs and local media in Worcester.

"Worcester is The Stuff," he says.