Bend, Oregon is now home to the last Blockbuster Video on Earth
The Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon will soon be the last one of its kind. CNN reports that another outlet in Morley, Australia would be closing its doors at the end of the month, leaving the lone location in Bend.
Sandi Harding, who manages the Bend location, is excited her store will be the last one standing, but still has “a kinship with the other Blockbusters.” She said that it was the store’s library of older, hard-to-find titles that keeps the location alive (along with the novelty of being the last Blockbuster).
Last year, the rental chain closed the last of its locations in Alaska, where they had survived largely due to the lack of high-speed internet in the Last Frontier. The Bend location had already been boasting its rep as “The Last Blockbuster” in the United States with specially-made merch. Now, it’ll be the last one on the planet.
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The video rental giant, which grew in popularity throughout the 1990s, and eventually peaked in the early 2000s, slowly lost its grip on the market the past couple decades. The blame mostly falls to competition from on-demand streaming services like Netflix or Amazon, as well as rental vending machines like Redbox. Though its ridiculous policy when it came to fines and late fees probably played a part, too.
For a spell, Blockbuster attempted to compete with Netflix with its own DVD-by-mail service, though that effort was shuttered back in 2013.
