Streaming services are convenient. I know this. I use them constantly. I am not writing this from a hand-cranked Victrola while yelling at a passing Tesla.
But sometimes, scrolling through endless movie titles on a couch feels less like entertainment and more like a weirdly lonely social science experiment. It reminds me of Bowling Alone — the idea that modern life quietly stripped away many of the ordinary places where people used to gather, bump into each other, make small talk, argue about nothing, and accidentally build community.
Video stores were one of those places.
Before streaming, picking a movie was an event. You met up with friends. You walked, biked, or drove to the local rental place. You ran through the aisles, laughing, holding up terrible-looking horror covers, debating whether a movie looked “bad good” or just bad-bad. Then you rented something, brought it home, watched it together, and either discovered a favorite or wasted 96 minutes of your life in the most communal way possible.
And then there were the clerks.
The best video store clerks were not cashiers. They were priests of the magnetic tape. They knew which movies were secretly related to other movies. They knew what you liked, what you claimed to like, and what you should probably watch next. This was especially true in small, family-operated places.
In Duluth, Minnesota, we had Steve, owner of the famous 8th Street Video — which, when I was 12, suddenly became 8th Street Video on 9th Street because it needed more room. Naturally.
Steve knew your name after meeting you once. He said hello when you walked in. Every VHS rental was always one dollar, no matter how new or old. He only took cash, which was charming, suspicious, and possibly a light embezzlement situation. But the place was magic.
It was where locals gathered. Where you ran into people. Where you found strange treasures like Andy Warhol’s Cocaine Cowboys or the Australian horror film The Plumber. It was a social landscape disguised as a business.
My kids will never fully understand the satisfaction of choosing a movie with friends, bringing it home, opening the plastic case, and realizing some absolute monster had not rewound it. So you waited. Together. Annoyed. Anticipating.
Maybe that’s okay. Technology changes. Culture changes. We gain things. We lose things.
But it is also okay to miss VHS. It is okay to miss the aisles, the weird carpet, the handwritten signs, the clerks, the accidental conversations, and the small social worlds that video stores created.
Today’s map is meant to stir up a bit of that nostalgia — not just for 1980s and 1990s technology and design, but for the places where choosing a movie still meant leaving the house.
Find Your (Former) Store HereWebMapGPT Prompt (598 Words)
# Intention
Make a retro map of former Hollywood and Blockbuster Video Stores to celebrate National VHS Day.
The map itself is not as important as the nostalgia. These stores used to blanket our landscape. They were meeting spots. Most Americans spent many of their weekend nights perusing the shelves of these stores. The goal is to remind Americans of what once was. Nostalgia factor. They can remember what video stores were once in their local areas.
# Aesthetic
80s/90s pastiche. I want this to look 72DPI through and through. Everything about the map and the interface should be pixelated and blurred like a 72DPI VHS tape. Some horzontal staticy lines should flicker across the window like they would on a VHS. Intermitent choppyness is also good.
# Map
– Opens to entire US with 1980s thick state border lines and very simplified. Albers equal area with alaska and hawaii in lower left. (Probably use D3 for this. No video stores shown yet. This is almost like the main menu.
– User can click on state, which does not highlight and is doesn’t even look interactive. More like a “hot key” where the cursor just changes to a clicking hand.
– When the user clicks the state, load the simplified state outline with 72DPI dots geolocated on top of it. The user may zoom in to see the stores in detail. Dot clusters shouldn’t be used, as the user will want to see where their old store was. But no streets or any details should be provided. They can zoom in up to 8 times the current zoom level, and they can pan the state, but they cannot pan the state off the viewport nor may they zoom out past the state. When zoomed out as far as possible over any state, the state should always fill either the height or width of map canvas.
– When a user clicks on a store, provide the store chain name, address, open date and close date (when available).
– Have a huge BACK ARROW button prominently displayed whenever the user is zoomed in on a state. The back arrow takes the user back to the entire US.
– Also, come up with a nostalgic, witty title and subtitle involving VHS and the socialness of meeting at a location to pick movies.
– Make sure the map works in landscape mode on mobile devices.
# Aesthatic
– 1980s TV newscast style GUI elements (big, brash, large text)
– random and variable VHS style flickering and warpiness
– 1980s TV local newscast colors and graphics style
– Cartography should be grossly simplified. Graphics very large due to bad DPI/resolution. Make this look like 1980s/1990s television recorded on VHS and being played back on a modern a device.
Again, map itself should be very simple state outlines, and point symbols. Hollywood Video stores can be purple. Blockbuster stores blue or yellow.
Include a gaudy note that says “Click a state to find your next rental!”
# Sources modal
Should be very hidden. Don’t want to take away from the aesthetic. lower left perhaps. Perhaps a “Call Now” button or similar. When it opens, very blocky and chunky 1980s style text.
– Cartographer: Ian Muehlenhaus (link to www.muehlenhaus.com)
– Made with Web Mapper GPT (link to www.webmapgpt.com)
– Dataset from GIS Dataset GPT (link to that public GPT)
– Dataset Geopackage (link to the geopackage)
– APIs Used: list APIs
– Dedicated to Steve, former owner of “8th Street Video on 9th Street” in Duluth, Minnesota. “They’re all good movies!” You are missed.
Thanks!