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The World's Last Blockbuster Has No Plans to Close:
The second-to-last Blockbuster, a squat blue-and-yellow slab wedged next to a real estate agency in Western Australia, will stop renting videos on Thursday and shut down for good at the end of the month. Two stores in Alaska, part of the final group of Blockbuster outlets in the United States, closed in July.
That will make the Blockbuster in Bend, Ore., one of a kind: a corporate remnant, just off the highway, near a cannabis retailer and a pet cremation service.
[...] But when Sandi Harding, the general manager of Bend's Blockbuster store, heard that she would be running what is effectively the Lonesome George of video-rental chains, she posted a giddy message on Facebook: "Holy Cow it's exciting"
[...] The Bend store became a Blockbuster franchise in 2000. It has about 4,000 active accounts and signs up a few fresh ones each day, Ms. Harding said. Some of the new customers are tourists who have traveled hours out of their way to stop in.
[...] One possible explanation for the store's long life: Bend is in a region that the city's mayor, Sally Russell, describes as having "huge expanses with really small communities" that often do not have easy access to the high-speed internet necessary for content streaming.
Many residents of outlying areas stop at Blockbuster during their weekly trips to town to run errands, drawn in part by the store's seven-day rental policy, Ms. Russell said, adding that the store's last-in-the-world status could even give it a lift.
And who could ever forget Carl and Ray?
(Score: 4, Funny) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 08 2019, @05:15AM
I sincerely hope the Anchorage Blockbuster passed along Russell Crowe's Jockstrap to be displayed now in this last Blockbuster, as appropriate for a pilgrimage site.
(For those not paying attention to news about the remaining Blockbusters, last year Crowe auctioned off a lot of his random stuff, including a jock strap from one of his movies. John Oliver bought it and donated it along with some other random Crowe crap to one of the few remaining Blockbusters in the world, in Alaska, where it apparently was on display, presumably until that store closed. Crowe, by the way, retaliated by donating Oliver's money to a foundation in Australia, which set up a ward in Oliver's name that treats koalas with chlamydia. No, I'm not making any of this up...)