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Video Station held its an annual Oscar contest on Sunday, February 26...and the next day, the 35-year-old Boulder store announced that it would be shuttering its doors for good early in March. The news was sad but not surprising; what's remarkable is that the brick-and-mortar video store stayed open year after year, despite all industry trends suggesting its inevitable doom.
First, cinephiles mourned the dying of Super 8, then 16mm and eventually 35mm film, blaming Blockbuster Video, VHS cassettes and then DVDs. Soon those fell to the wayside, too, as Youtube, Netflix and Amazon Prime delivered movies to customers who didn't want to leave the house. One of the most recent streaming services, FilmStruck, offers an online library of much of the Criterion Collection and other rare films.
Video stores with mammoth collections of hard-to-find movies, such as Video Station, just haven't been able to keep up. And so the stalwart video store, located since 2013 at 5290 Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder, will close its doors for good on March 6. The news was delivered February 27 on Video Station's blog.
To all our loyal and valued customers:
We are sorry to announce we will be closing The Video Station permanently, effective March 6, at 6pm. Unfortunately, the economics of brick and mortar retail finally caught up to us, after more than 35 years in business. We sincerely say thank you for your support - to all of you.
On Facebook, words of support from customers trickled in:
Awww. End of an era. Thanks for supporting your neighborhood cineasts all these year.
That's sad news. Video Station was a Boulder landmark, especially while on 28th.
Sad. No, *very* sad. Redbox is no substitute for browsing the shelves of a wonderfully-stocked video store. Thanks for hanging in there as long as you could. Best wishes to all. Peace.
Damn!
Westword had honored Video Station as the Best Video Store in the metro area in 2000: "The staff is quirky, friendly and knowledgeable without being condescending. Since the store is locally owned, there's no corporate presence to put a damper on things or dictate what movies can and can't be on the shelves."
Denver lost another hallmark video store, Video One, in April 2016.
That leaves Videotique, at 1205 East Ninth Avenue, as one of the region's last places to rent a movie — outside of a Redbox and the library. We strongly encourage you to stop by Video Station before it closes and visit Videotique while you still can.
Keep Westword Free... Since we started Westword, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Denver, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Denver with no paywalls.
