Inside the San­ta Bar­bara video shop keep­ing indie cin­e­ma alive

Hol­ly­wood may be the cen­tre of the movie uni­verse, but an hour’s dri­ve up the coast to sleepy San­ta Bar­bara, fish taque­rias, sego palms and surf­boards back­drop some note­wor­thy cin­e­mat­ic delights. Inde­pen­dent the­atres screen clas­sic films and con­tem­po­rary block­busters on gild­ed-mar­quees; a lantern-lit audi­to­ri­um with Span­ish-style bal­conies and paint­ed bougainvil­lea still sells real pop­corn and $6 mat­inée tickets.

But per­haps the least known – and most prized – trib­ute to Tin­sel­town is a tiny video store tucked away on Mis­sion street. Despite technology’s might­i­est efforts to con­sign rentals to the his­to­ry books, San­ta Barbara’s The Video Shop thrives on a local mar­ket that isn’t get­ting its movie fix from Net­flix or Hulu. The store boasts over 22,000 titles, from peri­od pieces to spaghet­ti west­erns to punk rock docu­d­ra­mas. Films are organ­ised by actor and genre, and new titles can be rent­ed for $3.50 (clas­sics are a dol­lar cheap­er, but must return the fol­low­ing day). While the internet’s grip on film cul­ture may have replaced cel­lu­loid with stream­ing, live ush­ers with auto­mat­ed kiosks, dou­ble-fea­tures with day-long binge­fests, San­ta Barbara’s devo­tion to the sil­ver screen keeps audi­ences search­ing for the obscure and the extraordinary.

Rental stores across Amer­i­ca have most­ly died out – even in Los Ange­les, a city with an intrin­sic con­nec­tion to cin­e­ma. Thus The Video Shop own­er Bill San­ford occu­pies a unique and pre­cious role with­in the mod­ern cin­e­ma land­scape. While an algo­rithm can sug­gest movies on cue, dig­i­tal ser­vices will nev­er be able to repli­cate the thrill of rifling through rare ani­mé or film noir titles, the back-and-forth ban­ter of patrons who have rec­om­men­da­tions to share and griev­ances to air, the sin­gu­lar Sun­day-night rit­u­al of piz­za and a video. That’s because The Video Shop comes with its own Fer­ry­man to the movie world: a liv­ing, breath­ing, ency­clo­pe­dic guide who will steer you past rivers of main­stream swill toward the per­fect motion-pic­ture story.

I sat down with San­ford at the store on a recent Thurs­day after­noon. Dressed in his sig­na­ture plaid kilt, wool vest and wide-brimmed hat, San­ford cuts a for­mi­da­ble fig­ure: his long red hair, bari­tone voice and numer­ous tat­toos are matched by the store’s inte­ri­or: floor-to-ceil­ing shelves of alpha­be­tised disks; life-size repli­cas of space aliens; auto­graphed movie posters; and a Darth-Vad­er-esque mask perched atop a vend­ing machine full of can­dy and soda. Bill’s Ger­man shep­herd Abby (named for first lady Abi­gail Adams) even has her own bed behind the counter, where the shop’s man­ag­er, Rafael Marys­ka, fre­quent­ly mans the fort.

Sanford’s path to shop-own­er was a cir­cuitous one. He start­ed in con­struc­tion and antique car restora­tion, but the heavy lift­ing led to back prob­lems; dur­ing recov­ery from an injury, he watched a lot of films. ​“I used to rent movies here, and start­ed hang­ing out with Mike [Hansen, The Video Shop’s founder and for­mer own­er]. We were becom­ing friends, and I some­times helped out around the store by shelv­ing movies. Slow­ly but sure­ly, I found myself behind the counter.” San­ford won’t say much about how he was able to pur­chase The Video Shop, except that a gen­er­ous bene­fac­tor lent him the down pay­ment. He offi­cial­ly became the store’s new own­er in Octo­ber, 2015. ​“I like to look back on that time as my ​‘intern­ship’; Mike would buy me lunch.”

When The Video Shop first opened for busi­ness in 1979, Beta­max was the coin of the realm and San­ford was a kid grow­ing up in Bal­ti­more. His father, a deputy sher­iff, worked late hours, but Sanford’s stay-at-home moth­er instilled a love of cin­e­ma in him at an ear­ly age. She pur­chased a VCR so that he could watch movies from the local rental store, and once argued her way into bring­ing nine-year-old Bill to see Dawn of the Dead, an NC17-rat­ed hor­ror. While his tastes have changed over the years, San­ford says he’s always been par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of British come­dies and peri­od pieces (any­thing with ​“char­ac­ter and sto­ry”), but he also loves com­ic-based films and doc­u­men­taries about music, about which he’s espe­cial­ly passionate.

I ask San­ford how his store has man­aged to sur­vive in a video-on-demand world. ​“A big part of it is the size of our selec­tion,” he explains, ​“we have fringe titles, for­eign films, odd doc­u­men­taries, almost all of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion.” But The Video Shop’s pop­u­lar­i­ty might have just as much to do with the ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of its pro­pri­etor, who took care to rou­tine­ly add new titles that oth­er mom-and-pop stores in the neigh­bour­hood – Cap­tain Video, Video Schmideo and Mil­pas Video, a Lati­no-titles only shop – didn’t stock. While those three even­tu­al­ly fell prey to the reces­sion, The Video Shop qui­et­ly endured, and reg­u­lars kept com­ing back.

San­ford acknowl­edges his good for­tune, but is hard­ly Pollyan­na about the shelf-life of the for­mat: ​“I always knew the rental busi­ness had a clock on it; my goal was to breathe a few more years of life into a dying piece of Amer­i­can cul­ture.” When I point out that disc-dooms­day is a com­mon indus­try refrain, San­ford looks wist­ful: ​“The rental busi­ness has been on a down­hill slide for a long­time. Stream­ing ser­vices dom­i­nate, and most movies are now avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mats. I have thou­sands of niche and fringe titles, though — movies that can’t be found online. Sad­ly, peo­ple have an appetite for main­stream, and stream­ing caters to that appetite.”

San­ford admits it has been a strug­gle to com­pete with the dozens of apps and stream­ing ser­vices avail­able to today’s con­sumer. At times he’s had to reach into his own pock­et to make sure the store stays afloat, but he insists on keep­ing his prices low and his selec­tion eclec­tic. Every Tues­day, 10 new titles still arrive by mail, which San­ford – as flu­ent in box office triv­ia as he is enthu­si­as­tic about the art form – is hap­py to curate. The store also offers a selec­tion of TV series rentals, disks for sale, and a ser­vice that trans­lates VHS tapes to DVDs. A cineaste for our times, San­ford admits to enjoy­ing the occa­sion­al series on Net­flix. As for movies on the big screen, he still prefers to rent: ​“I real­ly don’t go to the­atres much any­more, because cell phones are always going off.”

To vis­it the chan­de­liered hall­ways and fres­coed movie the­atres of San­ta Bar­bara is to step back in time: a place more old-Hol­ly­wood than Hol­ly­wood itself. The city cer­tain­ly has a long his­to­ry of film­mak­ing. In fact, California’s first ever movie stu­dio opened in San­ta Bar­bara in 1910: Amer­i­can Film Company’s ​‘Fly­ing A Stu­dios’ was at the time the largest movie stu­dio in the world, releas­ing near­ly one thou­sand silent films between 1912 and 1921. The city’s Mis­sion-style archi­tec­ture, sweep­ing ocean vis­tas and San­ta Ynez moun­tains have served as set loca­tions for dozens of icon­ic films, and the San­ta Bar­bara Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, held each year at the down­town Arling­ton The­ater, gen­er­ates almost as much buzz as Sun­dance or Telluride.

Dur­ing the fes­ti­val, the Riv­iera The­ater, a build­ing with expan­sive views of the Pacif­ic, show­cas­es for­eign films and low-bud­get inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tions. Movies are shown on Dol­by-vision grade film, which use laser-illu­mi­nat­ed images for crisp colours and deep, deep blacks. In the sum­mer months, old James Bond flicks are pro­ject­ed on the side of the San­ta Bar­bara cour­t­house wall while movie­go­ers sit on blan­kets and sip wine with their picnics.

Most of us think of rent­ing a movie as a quaint­ly ana­log activ­i­ty, right up there with mixed-tapes and snail-mail. But Sanford’s Video Shop speaks to the per­sis­tent cul­tur­al pull of bor­row­ing a hand­picked sto­ry and then giv­ing it back. ​“There’s noth­ing wrong with hav­ing both options [rent­ing and stream­ing],” he explains, ​“but it doesn’t hurt to get out and sup­port your local busi­ness. I’ll be here when you want that odd doc­u­men­tary or for­eign film or Oscar win­ning picture.”

At this point Sanford’s tone shifts, and he seems to be grap­pling with some­thing weighty: our nos­tal­gia for the past, maybe, or the shared col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences that movies them­selves are meant to cap­ture and pre­serve. ​“Movies are heal­ing. They are the most mod­ern form of sto­ry­telling we have. Some of my cus­tomers are kind of lone­ly peo­ple, and I can tell that this place is real­ly impor­tant to them. Movies help peo­ple from being afraid of the dark out there.”

The Video Shop is locat­ed at 128 West Mis­sion Street in San­ta Bar­bara, Cal­i­for­nia. You can donate to store here.

The San­ta Bar­bara Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val runs from 1 – 10 Feb­ru­ary, and fea­tures screen­ings of inde­pen­dent films, sev­er­al world pre­mieres and dai­ly lectures.