Just about everyone has somewhere special they went when young, a place that glows in memory. For some it may be a library or game arcade, for others a football field or bookshop. For Jay Carlson, growing up in western Massachusetts in the early 1990s, the centre of the universe was the video rental store.

This was before streaming, before Netflix, before DVDs. The videocassette player was the summit of consumer technology. At the rental shop, 12-year-old Jay would bump into friends and neighbours, hear about something that couldn’t be missed, talk up his own favourites. It was like social media before social media was invented.