Thanks to everyone who’s connected with us on social media, not to mention all of you who have made greatly appreciated donations from your video collections as we work to build our inventory. Here’s an update on where we’re at with our project, as well as a request for some help in making it a reality.
We’ve assembled a collection approaching 5,000 unique titles on DVD, VHS, and blu-ray, including a diverse spectrum of classic, independent, documentary, and foreign titles, and we’ve been working hard at cataloging and organizing the collection. We continue to solicit donations, with our primary needs being DVDs and blu-rays; any commercially issued titles on those formats can be taken to the Book Thing, which generously receives video donations on our behalf.
We’re well on our way toward our goal of building a world-class collection worthy of the great video stores of years past, and we feel confident in our ability to crowdsource many thousand more titles to make the collection even more definitive and exciting. But first, we need to find the right location.
Here’s where we need your help. As you might imagine, opening a video store these days is not a proposition that stands to bring in massive revenues, and while we feel confident that our idea for a non-profit video store is viable, finding an affordable space of an appropriate size and location is essential. We’ve put a lot of work into trying to find such a space, but so far we haven’t found the right fit.
Our hope is to find a space of similar size to the great video stores of the 80s and 90s, in a neighborhood such as Station North, south Charles Village, Remington, or Hampden. We think that for our project to work, we need to be in a convenient, central location that is also within, or close to, a shopping district of other independent enterprises. We know this is a tall order, and we’re hoping to connect with a sympathetic landlord to lease a space that meets all the above criteria. At the same time, we also remain open minded to any other location leads, space-sharing scenarios, or other new ideas that might occur to any of you.
Do you have such a space, or know a landlord we should be talking to? Please let us know! We remain very committed to building this collection and making it accessible to the Baltimore community in as affordable and accessible a manner as possible. Any help you can give us in reaching this goal is much appreciated.
THANK YOU!
The BVC
Beyond Video 