PROGRESS

“Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.” – Thor Heyerdahl

Looking through the email inbox today I ran across a post from Matt Labash’s Substack, in which he took note that today, the last remaining Blockbuster store on the planet (It’s in

Bend, Oregon) will have a Superbowl ad. No, you won’t see it during the halftime show; in fact the only ways to see it would be to go to the store for their “viewing party” or rent it from them online for $2 (I agree with Matt’s comment, “And now you remember why there aren’t any other Blockbuster stores anymore”).

It put me in mind of thinking about the loss of brick-and-mortar stores. I went to Blockbuster a few times, but the Video Store Of Video Stores was Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee, over in the cheap seats in North Hollywood. Their slogan was “If we don’t have it, they didn’t make it.” And it was true! The place was a rambling jumble of four stores that had once been separate in a mall, that had doorways cut through the adjoining walls to make one large store, with shelves that went to the ceiling and aisles that were about three feet wide, with shelves to either side that almost went to the ceiling. And they were full to bursting with videos. Obscure foreign language to American classic and everything in between. You could spend a day in there every week for a year and still only scratch the surface of what was available.

And the clerks knew what they were about. You could strike up a conversation with one of them, and after 15 or 20 minutes of chattin, they could recommend 20 movies to you that you would likely find interesting as a result of what you had mentioned, and they were always right. Unlike AI-driven online “tailored” advertising that has yet to figure out my tastes in anything.

During the late 80s and 90s, when the store was at its peak, it was a good place to go make Professional Contacts, since when you walked in the front door everyone was assigned the title and role of Movie Geek, so the fact that you might see Martin Scorsese going through a shelf of classics (I once did), it didn’t mean you couldn’t walk up to him, no matter who you were, and start a conversation about a mutually-enjoyed obscure movie. Tarantino used to come in and could be spotted leaving with a big pper shopping bag full of rentals. In fact, I did make connections there that led to employment back in the mid-90s, talking to the guy next to me rifling through the s-f 50s cheapies movies, who turned out to be a producer in need of a writer. It was based on “If this person has the taste to come to this shop and look through stuff like this, it’s highly likely we can get along on a project.”

Eddie Brandt’s is gone, killed by Netflix. And you can’t do things like what I just described on Netflix, or Disney +, or MGM +, or Apple TV, or anyplace else.

Eddie Brandt’s wasn’t the only place like that. I can state with confidence that if there had not been a Borders Bookstore up on the Northridge Mall five minutes up Tampa Avenue from where we lived in the house before this one, none of you dear readers would know who I am.

Jurate used to like to go there every couple weeks. She called in “treasure hunting,” and she was right. She’d go looking in her areas of interest, and I would go to mine, and would always at some point end up at the shelves with aviation history titles. While I was writing at Flight Journal, I wasn’t even thinking about writing books. Until one night, a clerk I had spoken to off and on when our paths crossed, came over and pulled out a book and handed it to me and said, “This just came in and I read it and it’s pretty good. I think you’d like it.”

It was “The Men Who Killed The Luftwaffe,” by Jay A. Stout. I looked through it, read a couple sections, and decided the clerk was right. I took it home and read it over the next week, and found in it a story I knew well - because I had written it in Flight Journal! I looked in the bibliography and there was my name and my article, cited as research. A few weeks later I was up on an aviation chat blog, and I noticed that Jay A. Stout had posted something there. I was able to find his email in the post because he was looking for information, and I sent him an email thanking him for using my story. He responded. We ended up talking on the phone, and he told me I really ought to get in touch with Eric Hammel, the guy who had first published his work (“FortressPloesti”). So I did and I have told you the story about the planned 20-minute conversation that finished four hours later.

And from that came “Fabled Fifteen” and from that came a query email from Marcus Cowper at Osprey, who is now my long-time editor about whether I would be interested in writing something for them, and from that came all the books you have read.

And you cannot do that at Amazon. No way, no how.

Most of the plastic model hobby has migrated online, where there are large mail order “stores” with lots of stock on hand and quick delivery at good prices. Actually, when I add in shipping, the price is about what I would pay at a local brick-and-mortar store, but since there isn’t one with that stock list... that is why there are very very few Local Hobby Shops left.

I happen to have two still available. One is a 15 minute drive up around Cal State Northridge, and the other is across the valley in Burbank, which I used to go to all the time when I was “an east valley guy.” I still make the trek over there, but far less the past three years of pandemic and caregiving, but they also have a good mail order business, so we’re still in business with each other.

The store that’s a short drive away has gotten my business for the past 35 years, moreso in the 20 years since we moved to the west end of the San Fernando Valley. They don’t have the stock list that any online shop has, but they do have The Estate Sale Shelves. The widows of the modeler who never managed to find A Round Tuit in time to get all those models he knew he was going to build when he bought them built, and died a kit collector instead of a modeler - they know they can bring the kits to the shop and Dave will sell them. Not at “collector prices,” but rather at the prices they originally sold for. “These are for modelers, not collectors,” as he puts it. And I know when I walk in, and go to the back of the store and check out the shelves, there’s a good chance there will be something there that is priced at “make him an offer he cannot refuse.” I also know there is a good likelihood I will run across another customer in the store who is someone I haven’t seen or talked to in awhile.

And none of that is anything you can do at Amazon or any of the online hobby shops (though two days ago I found a kit at Amazon that normally goes for $70 that was for sale for $35 delivered free tomorrow - “Make him an offer he cannot refuse”).

Thor Heyerdahl was right. “Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.”

And no, I won’t be watching the Stupor Bowl today. Because I am a communist.

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