By CAROLYN BROWN
Staff Writer
A new video store is coming to downtown Northampton. That’s right — a video store, in 2025!
STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
From left, Rayla Shawanda, Daniel Cashman, Jesse Hassinger, Rachael Powers, Sarah de Araujo, Elle Longpre, and George Myers, all co-owners of Vision Video, on Main Street in Northampton.
Visions Video is slated to open at 183 Main St. (in the former location of Spill The Tea Sis Apothecary) in mid-March. The volunteer-run store will operate on a tier-based subscription model: at the basic level, customers will pay $15 every month to take out up to three titles at a time, and they’ll also be able to rent VCRs and DVD players.
Owner George Myers, currently a programmer at (and former general manager of) Amherst Cinema and co-owner of Quarters in Hadley, had the idea to create a local video store a few years ago, but conversations with a few of his friends inspired him to put the plan in motion. Now, he and his volunteer board, also a team of his longtime friends, are in the process of getting Visions Video ready to open to the public.
Ironically, the thing that killed video stores originally — that is, Netflix, both in its original form of DVDs by mail and as a progenitor for the overall rise of streaming services — is what the group says will make Visions Video successful.
In the early years of streaming, it was convenient to be able to watch movies at home on demand, rather than wait for them to arrive. Since then, however, as those services have taken over the media landscape, they’ve gotten expensive, and customers looking to watch certain movies or shows are at the mercy of companies, who can and often do remove those titles from their libraries completely, regardless of demand. As board member Rayla Shawanda put it: “Why am I spending, like, $60 a month, and I still can’t find something I want to watch?”
STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
Elle Longpre and Daniel Cashman, two of the co-owners of Vision Video, look over vintage posters as they set up the store.
Visions Video, then, will be an alternative to that, with the bonus of providing what she called a “nostalgia factor” for people who grew up going to video stores in the ’80s and ’90s. Locally, the store is filling the void left by Pleasant Street Video, which closed in 2011. (Owner Dana Gentes also cited Netflix as the reason for the closing.)
“If you ask people if they had a good memory of a streaming service, you’re going to be hard-pressed to pull much out, other than the fact that they saw a movie,” Myers said. “But, if you ask people about good memories of video stores, they’ll be able to tell you tons and tons of things about the material space — the actual experience they had in there, the way in which they learned about films.”
Visions Video will also add a human element to the movie-watching process, both in the sense that customers will be able to get recommendations from real people, rather than an algorithm, as well as from curated collections like staff-pick shelves and themed movie lists; and because the store will host events (off-site at first, until they get the proper permits) to bring together the local film community. Board member Elle Longpre said that being isolated during the pandemic particularly drove home the necessity of watching movies and shows with other people: “I need better ways to experience art that aren’t just sitting in front of my computer by myself.”
STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
George Myers and Daniel Cashman, two of the co-owners of Vision Video, look over shelved videos as they set up the store in Northampton.
Myers agreed: “The less we see each other, the worse we are. That’s always what I come back to, and creating a space like this makes it so you have access to an unprecedented selection of films, but you also begin to have access to the people that are watching them.”
As Myers and his team get the store ready to open, they have to keep adding to their collection — right now, it has nearly 4,000 titles, largely donated by members of the founding team and supplemented with some donations from the community, and they’re aiming to open the store once they reach 10,000. First, though, they have to take care of the basics — cataloging their current inventory into a database, finishing up some shelving work and other construction, and organizing the space overall. They also just launched a crowdfunding campaign, which aims to raise at least $25,000 to pay for things like rent and utilities — and more movies, of course. In fact, as they see it now, the Main Street space is a pop-up location. Depending on how their membership grows, they want to expand into a larger space in the future, especially if they can find an angel investor who understands their (pardon the pun) vision.
In any case, they’re looking forward to bringing a video store back to the Pioneer Valley.
STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
Jesse Hassinger, one of the co-owners of Vision Video, shelves videos as they set up the store.
“There’s this potential that exists when you create a space like this,” Myers said. “A lot of great things can really happen.”
To learn more or donate to Visions Video, visit visionsvideo.org.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.
