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Hiding away in the basement of an historical Portland building lies Videoport.
This is your movie store, certainly not your parents’. And, unlike Blockbuster or Netflix, Videoport is not out to temporarily exchange the biggest box office hits for your dollars as though they are sex slaves. Instead, this independently owned movie rental place is staffed by experienced film geeks {I mean that in the best way possible} who aim to assist in developing your cinematic pallet.
It’s a place where it seems like you could name your top three favourite movies of all time that span multiple genres and, almost like magic, the employee assisting you would produce a film you’ve never heard of but that somehow has your favourite actor, a completely original theme, and a score that blows you away. I guess it’s sort of like the record store in High Fidelity, but for movies, and the employees are all much more tactful than Barry.
Looking at their fantastic selection, one might think it was hard to navigate amongst these shelves, but you’ll find the films so well organized by genre that this just isn’t a problem. I always head to the Classics section first, and Ryan usually goes to the middle aisle where Horror, Sci-Fi, and the Incredibly Strange sections {Yes, there’s a section for that} are lorded over by Frankenstein and his buddies Godzilla, and Obama — by the way, who knew he was a Trekkie?
You can rent kids’ movies for just a dollar every day except for on Fridays when they’re completely free, no paid rental necessary. As for the rest of the sections — there’s a free day for them, too! With any other rental, Middle Aisle Monday will award you a freebie from one of the six sections located in the center of the store. I like Tough + Triassic Tuesdays when I can take home the Shirley Maclaine movie of my choice for free so long as Ryan picks any other movie out to go with it. And for those of you who live outside of Portland, you can rent three movies now for an entire week and not have to worry about rushing back to town to drop them off! Even without using the daily deal, rentals are still dirt cheap.
If you need a bit of inspiration before making your choice, there’s usually some cult classic rolling on the TV located in the back corner of the store. They’ve got DVDs, VHS tapes, Blurays and tons of television shows covering every decade, so as long as you’ve got eyes and ears you’ll be satisfied. I honestly think that renting from Videoport will be the one thing that I miss the most about living in Portland. Having all of that culture right there at my fingertips is inexplicably exciting to me. So, if you live in Southern Maine and you haven’t been here yet, you are sorely missing out.
Happy renting!
xx.
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