At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster Video had roughly 9,000 stores worldwide and a legitimate claim on Friday night itself. Today it has exactly one — a franchise store on NE Revere Avenue in Bend, Oregon, that has outlived the corporation, the format wars, and every prediction of its death.
How one store survived the extinction
Blockbuster’s collapse is business-school legend now: the company famously passed on buying Netflix for $50 million in 2000, filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and its remaining corporate stores were wound down under Dish Network. Franchise stores hung on longest. When the store in Perth, Australia shut in March 2019, Bend became the last Blockbuster on the planet.
The Bend store survived for unglamorous reasons: it was franchise-owned rather than corporate, sat in a town with loyal regulars, and was run tightly for decades by general manager Sandi Harding, who became the reluctant face of the brand’s afterlife. When the surrounding company evaporated, the store kept its licence, kept its blue-and-yellow signage, and kept renting.
From video store to pilgrimage site
Being last turned out to be a business model. Tourists now drive to Bend specifically to walk the aisles, buy “The Last Blockbuster” merchandise, and rent a movie for the novelty of the late fee. A 2020 documentary, The Last Blockbuster, streamed — with maximum irony — on Netflix. That same year the store listed itself on Airbnb for a handful of 1990s-themed sleepovers, couch and VHS stacks included, for $4 a night.
The membership card still works. New ones are still issued. A surprising share of revenue now comes from T-shirts and hoodies shipped worldwide — nostalgia, it turns out, travels better than VHS tapes ever did.
Why we can’t let it go
Nobody misses rewinding tapes or paying late fees. What people miss is the ritual: the Friday walk to the store, the negotiation over one rental, the stranger’s recommendation at the counter, the box art gamble. Streaming solved the inconvenience and quietly deleted the occasion.
The Bend store persists because it sells that occasion back to us, two nights at a time. As long as enough people keep buying it, the last Blockbuster has no particular reason to become the zero-th.
