Original photo by Buddy Mays / Alamy Stock Photo
At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster, the wildly successful movie rental chain, boasted 9,094 locations. Today it has just one. Bend, Oregon, is home to the former giant’s last remaining outpost, a status the store attained when its counterpart in a suburb of Perth, Australia, closed in 2019. Originally opened in 1992 as Pacific Video, the location became a Blockbuster franchise store eight years later — and doesn’t look to be closing any time soon. That’s thanks in part to the 2020 documentary The Last Blockbuster, which contributed to the brick-and-mortar store being cemented as a tourist attraction among nostalgia-minded visitors.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factIf you ever find yourself in the mood for a drink that “pairs perfectly with buttery theater popcorn,” try the Last Blockbuster. The black ale with “nuances of red licorice” is a collaboration between the store and local brewery 10 Barrel; the label even resembles Blockbuster’s logo.
Besides the throwback vibe, another major attraction is the store’s expansive library. The Bend Blockbuster has a collection of around 25,000 movies, more than six times as many as Netflix, the monolith most responsible for its parent company’s slow decline. And while no one doubts the convenience of streaming, cinephiles continue to champion independent shops such as Scarecrow Video in Seattle (120,000 titles available) and Cinefile Video in Los Angeles (30,000) that carry rare and/or out-of-print selections unlikely to be found on Netflix, Hulu, or most other streaming services.
Numbers Don't Lie
More Interesting Reads
The first DVD ever rented on Netflix was ______.
Ready to reveal?
Confirm your email to play the next question?
The first DVD ever rented on Netflix was “Beetlejuice” (in 1998).
Blockbuster turned down the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million.
Back when the company was in its infancy, Netflix’s founders offered to sell their DVD-by-mail business to Blockbuster for the princely sum of $50 million. Blockbuster declined, and at the time their reasoning was sound — it was early 2000, their own company was valued at $6 billion, and Netflix was on track to lose $57 million that year alone. Within a decade, their fortunes had completely reversed: Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, by which time Netflix had shifted away from its mail-order roots to focus on streaming video. In 2020, the company made close to $25 billion in revenue.
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
top picks from the optimism network
Interesting Facts is part of Optimism, which publishes content that uplifts, informs, and inspires.
