If a DVD owner from the year 2005 found herself transported back to a video store circa 1982, she would likely find the space remarkably familiar: videocassette cases lining the walls, a movie playing on a television set, maybe some marquee lights framing an announcement board over the checkout counter — all in all, not terribly unlike the video store of two and a half decades later.

However, understanding the video store simply as a transactional space in which money is exchanged for goods and services misses the forest for the trees.

That same time-traveling video renter might find herself startled by the employee offering to recommend a movie, or by the knot of customers hanging out by the counter, shooting the breeze and discussing film. The early video store was often a place to talk as well as to shop, and the persona and expertise of retailers and clerks structured the consumer experience of home video as much as the shelves on the wall. The people behind the counter, and in many cases those in front of it, were not merely moving through the consumption junction but were, in fact, integral parts of it.

The traditional story told about home video is that its sudden appearance fragmented the moviegoing audience into individuals. As Butsch and others have argued, home video helped the viewing public wall themselves off in their separate living rooms. What this argument misses, however, is the shared practice of acquiring those tapes and then watching them at home — in its early years, the video store became a third place where customers, retailers, and clerks met, talked, and shared a common experience of movies on videocassette.