Surviving streaming: Inside one of Michigan's last video stores

Closing up shop

There are a few other video stores still hanging around in Michigan, and they're not necessarily in it for the long haul.

Lightning Video on Warren Avenue in southwest Detroit is only open a few days a week and keeps odd hours.

Planet Video in Chesaning is now Chesaning Tobacco & Planet Video, and owner Harry — he wouldn't give his full name over the phone — is actively trying to get out of the video business; he offered his stock of thousands of titles to a reporter calling and checking in on the business.

"I'm about to get rid of them," he says, adding the videos, which "take up two-thirds of the space in the store," don't rent anymore. He says he'd be better off converting to a full-on party store and selling beer and wine than trying to rent out copies of "Barbie."

In Hartford, west of Kalamazoo, Hometown Video has become Hometown Video Vintage Toy & Collectables, and owner Shayne Darling is de-emphasizing his video stock to make more room for "Star Wars" figures and the like.

Video rentals "used to be gangbusters" and made up 70% of his business, says Darling, who has owned the store since 2010. Because he's in a rural area, he still rents to people who can't get internet in their homes and thus can't stream. But business really tailed off after COVID, he says, and now he's selling off his existing stock and not bringing in many new titles.

"It's sad, but it is what it is," he says.

Konja — who says he's constantly fighting with his seven brothers, who are his business partners and want him to close the store — has toyed with outside elements to bring more people in and revitalize the biz.

"I've thought about a coffee shop idea," says the 62-year-old, who came to Michigan from Baghdad with his family in August of 1979. "Bringing in a couple of couches to make it like a really nice area, like how you go to bookstores and they have a coffee shop inside and people are reading books and stuff like that? People could walk around here, drinking coffee and wandering the aisles like, 'Oh my God, you remember this movie?'" So far, it's still just an idea.

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