Sydney’s last video stores are closing

SUNDAY at 5pm is rarely a peak shopping hour, but this cavernous basement space of a video store is suddenly crawling with shoppers.

Civic Video in Newtown is one of the last to close in Sydney. This branch in Padstow closed after 25 years due to declining customer numbers in 2015.

SUNDAY at 5pm is rarely a peak shopping hour, but while other stores are getting ready to close, a cavernous basement space in Sydney’s Newtown is crawling with shoppers.

Making the scene even stranger is the must-have item all these customers are so eager for: rental DVDs.

People carrying armfuls of cheesy ’80s movies and complete box sets of long-cancelled TV shows jostle with film lovers hunting for titles so obscure they can’t be found online. It’s a vision that would be more at home in 1997 than 2017, and one that Civic Video Newtown hasn’t seen in a very long time.

First off: yes, Civic Video still exists. Despite the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Stan, discount DVD warehouses like JB Hi-Fi and endless legally dubious ways to download, torrent or stream movies and TV shows online, Australia’s self-described “number one choice in DVD and Blu-ray rentals” still has 27 brick-and-mortar stores across the country. While the majority survive in regional towns in Queensland and Western Australia, a handful linger on in inner-city Sydney, serving small, dedicated clienteles long after being forgotten by everyone else.

With a 35-year history on the bustling King Street shopping strip and more than 25,000 titles on the shelves, Civic Video’s Newtown store is one of the chain’s last and largest Sydney holdouts — at least, until now. On Sunday, loyal Civic members learned via text message that the store is finally closing its doors, and its selection is being sold off to all comers.

Ironically, the news of Civic Newtown’s death has briefly brought the store back to life. More customers have come through the door in a few days than the shop has seen in months.

“The regulars kept us going. We’ve had more people in here since we announced we’re shutting down than we’ve had since I can remember,” says Sabah, who’s worked at Civic for about six months.

“Coming to work every day is like travelling back in time,” she says. “You’re part of a dying industry, so working here has a neighbourhood feel you don’t get anywhere else.”

Sabah periodically takes time out from stacking new titles on the shelves to exchange farewells with the store’s diehard patrons. One of them, Paul, has been renting DVDs every week for ten years, walking his dogs from nearby Annandale since Civic’s Leichhardt location shut down in 2015.

“I like browsing, and the little human touches you get from coming into a place like this,” he says. “I don’t want to shop for my movies online, but Netflix is ridiculously cheap, and corporations have made it so small businesses can’t compete anymore.”

One of Sabah’s loyal customers Paul used to go to the Civic video at Leichhardt every week until in closed in 2015. He says he’ll miss the human touches you get when you hire a movie from a physical store. Picture: Roy Garner

Even now, some of those little quirks are on display as Civic Newtown sells off the many side-products it stocked in its efforts to diversify. Besides an internet cafe, mobile phone cards and both printing and fax services (the fax machine is going cheap, if you’re so inclined), the video shop also became an unlikely purveyor of foreign confectionary. People looking for American-style candy corn, the revitalised range of Yowie chocolates or New Zealand’s frighteningly named ‘Mighty Perky Nana’ chocolate bar might not have much luck in supermarkets, but Civic Newtown provided a niche service to complement its main trade.

One group has taken a particular interest in the wealth of titles suddenly up for grabs: movie buffs. Conor Bateman is the managing editor of independent online film magazine 4:3. He believes that in an age where people’s watching habits are increasingly standardised by streaming services, surviving video stores serve a valuable function as preservers of eclectic and offbeat films.

“In the age of streaming, so much is out of print or unavailable,” Bateman says. “There’s a whole argument to be had about Netflix’s role as a curator, deciding what gets included and what doesn’t. The virtue of video stores, no matter how seemingly obsolete they are, is in their function as de facto archives.”

Bateman himself has picked up some rare finds in the closing down sale, including the 1977 colonial-era revenge drama Journey Among Women and 2001 French horror flick Trouble Every Day. But he especially recommends looking for “old Australian films”, which can linger on video store shelves for years before being rediscovered.

With at least six weeks of the closing down sale left, there’s still time for curious passersby and nostalgia hunters to scour Civic Newtown’s shelves for old favourites, guilty pleasures or souvenirs from another time. For those Newtown loyalists who can’t stomach surrendering to the streaming juggernaut — and who are willing to commute — a tiny clutch of Civic stores still operate in Bondi, Five Dock and West Ryde. For everyone else, another small window to the past is quickly closing.