I’m glad I grew up during the 80’s. Looking back on it now its pretty easy to say that the 80’s was most likely the most influential decade on Pop culture. The “80’s Aesthetic” is alive and well today in design and pop culture. There are plenty of TV shows and movies that are either direct sequels to 80’s movies or heavily inspired by them such as Stranger Things. It was a time where there were a lot of big risks taken on interesting and creative concepts in entertainment so its no wonder it has had such a lasting legacy.
Of course the Video Store was a staple of this period thanks to the new convenience of watching videocassettes at home. In the early part of the decade video stores popped up everywhere! They were “Mom and pop” owned stores with very unique identities. There were stores stuck into supermarkets, pizzerias and even little convenience stores would have a rental section. Eventually corporate america would shut out the little guys with their huge bright stores, massive selection, and ability to keep new releases in stock. Today people seem to have a lot of love for Blockbuster Video but they were the ones destroying those unique and weird video stores that had so much character.
In the last few years I’ve started building a collection of video tapes in a corner of my studio. Just on a shelf without much though put into displaying the tapes. Then I saw this amazing pop up art project show up in California called Slashback Video. It was trying to recapture the look and feel of a small independent video store from the 80’s but with an entirely horror bent to it. That was all the inspiration I needed to decide I needed to build one of my own!
Thanks to Facebook marketplace I quickly found display counters to use as my check out counter for the store. Many of the posters and standees are ones I’ve picked up over the years. This project will be ever evolving so I expect I’ll creating a new video every year for the store!
