Videoclub

Going out from my city Barcelona, I am visiting my friends in Salamanca which is located in north of Spain, to spend Christmas and a New Year’s holidays.

On Christmas night, I played a game with my friends.  In that game there was a quiz “Q. Where did Quentin Tarantino work at when he was young? – A. At a videoclub.”  I didn’t really know the word “videoclub” (it is Spanish word) but at that moment I thought it’s like somewhere you can buy videos, or somewhere you can see videos.  I didn’t really care about what it meant and the game went on.

By the way, I like walking around the city.  I walk without thinking, without map nor any specific purpose.  All I need is my iPod and I just walk to wherever I find it interesting.  I think it is the best way to know about a new place : walking and getting lost.

Today I went walk alone in Salamanca, and suddenly I found this —  a videoclub.  I was interested and just entered.  And I finally found that — a videoclub is a video rental shop.  I love this kind of shop.  There are many video rental shop in Japan and I love going there and renting DVDs or CDs.  However, I have never seen it in Barcelona.  (I am sure there are some but I didn’t find it there.  Some friends said it is common to download movies from Internet and this kind of shops have disappeared a lot in Spain.)

“Ah videoclub, why not just get in.”

It was a small videoclub but I liked it.  I asked a owner if I can take some photos for my blog and he said, “No problem, go ahead, except that dirty leaky ceiling.”

It was a nice small shop.

Each DVDs are 2€.

The system of the shop seemed a little bit different from what I know from Japan.  In my country, each DVD case has another smaller case which has the disc itself and you bring that smaller one to the cash register.  But in this shop, every box was empty.  The owner said he will find the disc which customer wants, from the big shelf behind him.  Good work man!

“Ay, empty”

“All of the cases are empty, I have all discs here behind this cash desk.”

And one more thing, usually in Japanese video rental shop, renting porn film is only for the people more than 18 years old and a space for that kind of videos is divided by a curtain, which usually says “don’t enter here under 18 years old.”  But in this video shop it was not divided the space at all and I didn’t notice where I was standing and staring at until I saw a small card which was saying “lesbians” and many naked women.

So nice for a fan of “lesbians” but there were no other genre card.  Why.

Anyway, I was glad to understand what exactly “videoclub” is.  I just wanted to share this shop because I think it doesn’t exist a lot anymore in Spain but it is something I like and feel valuable.  Whenever I go to videoclub and take a look at some DVDs, I think of someone I never know but who also saw that movies before I rent.  It is one of the best ways of “sharing something” that has existed for a long time.

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