Video Store Pics: Peninsula Video, Burlingame California VHS Rental Case

Hey kids. As you all know I’m a huge Video Store Aficionado. I long for the days when there was a store on every corner and a fun friday was spent walking the aisles looking at the boxes while trying to find the perfect movie to watch. That was my ideal weekend. Sure, you can watch Netflix or get a movie on Vudu or whatever but it’s not the same.. 

Anyhow, I was at The Dig the other day and I came across something that really captures the feeling of those long gone days.. A neat rental box from a store called Peninsula Video in Burlingame California. 

What makes it really great is that they taped a flyer for the store across the front of the brown plastic case. Let’s take a closer look at the flyer. It’s really great.

How neat is that? There are a ton of neat little details we can glean from it. It looks like they have some sort of sliding scale for late fees depending on what sort of title you rented. The cost for this particular tape was 1.50 which was the second lowest possible rate. I imagine that this was a generic stock title and that the dollar rate was for children’s movies. They tended to be the lowest.. 

Besides VHS Tapes they also rent Nintendo Games, Sega Genesis stuff as well as Gameboy games. I believe that the Gameboy was released in 1989 so that places this flyer at some point past that date. 

As far as I recall none of the video stores in my area rented Gameboy games. I don’t know why not but as far as I recall they didn’t. Those folks in Burlingame were lucky in that regard I guess… 

The shop also repairs VCRs, that’s pretty cool and they had a self-serve Xerox service. That means that they had a Xerox machine in the corner and that you could run off some copies if you want.. I wonder how popular that was? 

They also sell new electronic items. I wonder what sort? VCRs probably. I don’t know. The mind reels at the possibilities.

I did like two seconds of research into it and got a pic of the location. I was curious what the store looked like.. Here it is. It’s a Supercuts now… 

Well, there you have it. At one time there was a video store and nowadays you can get haircuts there… I guess everyone needs haircuts but I’d way prefer that there was a video store with a Xerox in it…