Alaska Blockbuster store, celebrated on Last Week Tonight, closes
Today, the company’s two Alaska stores announced that they are closing the last remaining locations there a little bit later this month. These locations received a slight boost after Oliver sent Russell Crowe’s jockstrap from Cinderella Man, which was a part of an elaborate auction and comedic runner on the show, up to be displayed there. Unfortunately, that only went so far.
Read more of what the company had to say on the subject in a new post over on Facebook:
We regret to inform our customers that Blockbuster Video will be closing both the College and Debarr stores starting July 16th. We will reopen for our inventory sale on Tuesday, July 17th at 12 noon and will run through the months of July and August. These are the last two Blockbuster stores in Alaska that survived and it is sad to say goodbye to our dedicated customers. We have thought of you as family for the past 28 years. Both Kelli Vey and I (Kevin Daymude) have been with the company since 1991 and have had great memories throughout our career. Thank you for sticking by us throughout all these years. I can’t tell you how much it means to us. We hope to see you at our stores during the closing, even if it’s just to say “Hello”. What a great time to build your media library and share some Blockbuster memories with us. We will miss all of you!
With these closures, there is now just one more Blockbuster store remaining in all of America in Bend, Oregon. There may still be international locations, but Netflix is really the thing that killed them more so than anything. There seemed to be an awareness of this with the company dating all the way back to the mid-2000s, when the chain was starting to come up with its own plans and variations in hopes of being able to rival what Netflix was doing then … and that was before their streaming plan went into high gear. Now, Blockbuster is truly a dinosaur of the 1990’s, something still rooted in deep nostalgia as the time in which we grew up.
Are you sad that Blockbuster is officially going the way of the dodo? Share now in the comments!
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