There are those among us — perhaps not many, but maybe a little bit more than that — who feel a pang every time we walk by the location of a once-mighty video store. “It didn’t have to be this way,” you might say to the sidewalk outside where, say, TLA Video on 4th Street used to be. Because we gave up a lot when we gave up the video store, and in return we just got servitude to services, upsells, and the whims of licensees. In the bargain, we also lost the human touch, and a community space. We got convenience, but we lost depth. 

There’s enough of us out there to make for, at the very least, a loving cult that misses everything about video tapes and DVDs and how we bought and rented them. Enough that after a kind soul launched something called @freeblockbuster in Los Angeles last year — think of those tiny free libraries that folks now put on trees, in lawns and on playgrounds, but with videos and snacks, all for the taking — other little Free Blockbusters started popping up all over the country.

Fishtown got one last week, courtesy of Kim Lettiere, a prop artist working in the neighborhood. “A good friend of mine, Brian Morrison, started FreeBlockbuster in L.A., and as soon as I heard about it, I wanted to make one for the Philly community,” she told us. She asked friends at Big Howl to host it in front of their new studio in Fishtown, and voila! Movie magic. “I wanted to give back to the city that continues to inspire me and create something for the people that is mostly run by the people.”

To that end, here are the rules: Take a movie, leave a movie, be kind & rewind. Folks can borrow freely, or donate their discarded VHS tapes or DVDs, and snacks are welcome. 

“The reaction has been incredible!,” she told us. “I put some of my own DVD’s in it on the first day it was out, and within a few hours, people were starting to take movies, some showed up just to leave some movies. A day later and we already had more DVD’s and VHS than when we started. Yesterday, we had microwave popcorn packs and boxes of movie theater candy in there.”

Best of all, Lettiere says, is this: “People are really embracing the idea and that makes me so happy.”