New NYC video store reviving nostalgic experience for movie buffs ‘tired’ of streaming — including new films on VHS and DVD
NY Post
Streaming didn’t kill the video star.
Dust off your VCRs, ’90s kids — a new NYC video store is reviving a brick-and-mortar movie scene pushed to the brink of extinction by streaming platforms.
Opened last week in Williamsburg, Night Owl Video is now the only full-service video store in NYC. They offer around 1,500 unique titles from 1980 goresploitation flick “Cannibal Holocaust” to new releases like Oscar-winning “Anora,” spanning VHS, DVD and other mediums from the halcyon days of physical media.
Both new and secondhand movies are available for purchase with prices ranging from $5 to over $100 for the rarer VHS tapes and they plan on doing rentals in the future.
“We’re trying to stock every kind of format, every kind of genre, every kind of movie, so that the store can appeal to everyone,” co-owner Aaron Hamel, 35, told The Post.
Hamel founded Night Owl alongside Jess Mills, 39, a fellow cinephile he met while the pair worked at NYC’s legendary B-movie studio Troma Entertainment, with the goal of filling Gotham’s ever-widening video store void.
It was a flashback to NYC in the 1990s.
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