found: video rental stores downtown

the other day i finally tracked down a couple of video stores in downtown los angeles. they’re within a couple of blocks of each other in the bunker hill area. the one i went looking for, based on its phonebook listing, was global video, located at about 2nd and figueroa. the other one i stumbled across was video action, at 1st and hope.

they’re both independents, of course, and most of the space of both is taken up by vhs, although both have reasonably large dvd collections. global video has live displays (tapes/dvds are in the boxes on the shelves), and video action uses a dead (or closed) display system, with shelves full of video tapes behind

dvd rentals at video action were $2.50/night, with some specials whose details i’ve already forgotten, and dvd rentals at global video are $3/night.

i also visited three video stores in my old neighborhood earlier in the week — blockbuster video, hollywood video, and odyssey video. one thing that struck me about odyssey is how dingy it was. it hasn’t aged particularly well.

it surprises me how much of a contrast there is between the chain stores and the independents. both chains stores are much larger, and naturally they feel much less crowded as a result. at the two downtown, it felt like two people trying to look at the dvds would be crawling over each other just to be able to see things.