It’s Friday night and your mom is ordering pizza for dinner. Homework can wait until Sunday so you pull on your red vinyl Airwalks, grab the keys to your 1992 Plymouth Acclaim, and head to Blockbuster to pick a movie for the family to watch after dinner.
The anticipation of walking the aisles at Blockbuster— looking at the cover of every movie, picking up the interesting ones to read the back—was often more exciting than the actual movie. Not to sound like all of my forty-two years, but kids these days will never appreciate the suspense of rushing to rent a VHS or DVD and finding the movie on the shelf. Or even worse, an empty shelf.
Unless they live in Bend, OR, home of the last remaining Blockbuster! Yes, today, in the year of 2025, you can still rent a DVD at Blockbuster in Bend. With a photo ID and $3.99, you can experience the nostalgia of pre-Netflix movie watching.
Not surprisingly, our Airbnb in Bend didn’t have a DVD player, so we settled for a walk-through to honor our childhood memories. The lone employee working said the majority of their summer sales are memorabilia, but once tourist season ends, locals do actually rent movies. I saw this myself, as two people came in and rented while we were there.
After wandering the aisles for a bit, we left with a magnet and a big dose of sentimentality.
I wouldn’t visit Bend specifically to go to Blockbuster, but it was definitely a fun addition to our itinerary.