Oddly tucked away on the quiet corner of East 24th Avenue and Agate Street, Silver Screen Video’s business is an unassuming shop in the South University neighborhood. The outside bears no resemblance to large-scale video stores filled with window fronts teeming with neon and featured attractions posters. Shadowed by a large tree, the storefront is an off-white, painted over what was once a small market in the ’20s and ’30s when 24th Avenue was just a gravel road. The rows and stacks of movies illuminated by the indoor lighting is the only way to know the store rents movies.
“It’s all word of mouth,” Michael Young, a sales associate at Silver Screen Video, said.
Silver Screen Video’s appeal is something unique from the slowly decaying video store chains or the thriving online rental system; it’s simplistic movie variety.
“There are certainly a lot of college students that live around there, but we don’t do any advertising, so a lot of people don’t know we’re there,” said store owner Don Flynn, who also owns the Secret Garden Bed & Breakfast Inn on East 19th Avenue and University Street.
The store has one of the largest varieties of art house, classical and foreign films, and television series in the entire city. Silver Screen Video also offers the unanimous favorites from the traditional genres of comedy, action, drama and horror.
“What’s cool about here is we take suggestions. If you’re looking for a movie and we don’t have it, but I put it on the list and if Don finds it, he brings it in,” Young said.
“We don’t try to impress people with how many we have; it’s the variety,” Flynn said.
Adding to lure of a video store so close to campus is that a five-day rental is only $1.99 for most movie titles. This is a bargain in comparison to the $5 week-long rentals for most movie store chains.
“We have really decent prices. Years ago video stores had cheaper prices; our prices haven’t changed since that time,” Young said.
While the film rental industry’s future looks bleak, Silver Screen Video continues to stay in business.
“We aren’t a very busy business, but we’re staying afloat. We’re doing well enough or we wouldn’t be here. It definitely has been picking up more lately, and Blockbuster has been calling and referring people when they don’t have movies,” Young said.
In September 2010, Blockbuster announced it was $1 billion in debt and filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. The Hollywood Video empire has completely crumbled to the ground with the announcement of a complete liquidation of all assets. Much of this has been caused by the domination of Netflix, which exceeded 10 million members in February, and Redbox kiosks with more than 25,000 locations in the United States and seven in a one-mile radius of campus.
Flynn and Young both attribute the Silver Screen Video’s doors staying open to the support from the surround community. Although most University students aren’t aware of Silver Screen Video, many families that live in the area continuously visit the store.
“There are more people that come on a daily or every-other-day basis, then people that come in every once and a while,” Young said. “We have a pretty loyal customer base. A lot of awesome people come in here.”
“It’s convenient and cheap,” said Nathan Georgitis, a resident who lives close to the store.
Yet with a continuously returning clientele and a solid cash flow, Flynn still sees the need to evolve the store with the transitioning market. In February, Flynn will execute plans to change Silver Screen Video into a new business called the Blue Note Cafe. The new business will have cafe-style dining, while also providing the same selection of movies it currently offers.
Although it will no longer be the underdog video store that currently sits on East 24th Avenue and Agate Street, the store will still operate under its original intentions to independently provide the surrounding community its movie viewing pleasures. It’s a business model that Young believes will never go out of business.
“It’s very nostalgic for people to come in and be in a movie store looking at a movie. A lot of people appreciate that and the fact that it’s a locally owned video store. People in Eugene want to support local businesses,” Young said.
Whether or not students start to frequent the unassuming independent business is not a huge concern to either Flynn or Young, who play directly into Silver Screen Video’s philosophy to rent movies at a low price with a lot of variety. Everything else will take care of itself.
Young displayed this as he sat in the empty store next to a stack of movies.
“I like working here; it’s mellow. I get to work with something I love, which is most important to me,” Young said.
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