The life and times of Vulcan Video. Fare thee well, old friend.

[Editor’s note: the following is a eulogy for Vulcan Video written by former Assistant Manager Christopher Giles on the day the news broke. We’ll miss you terribly, VV.]

Today we received the official word that Vulcan Video will be permanently closing its doors. It’s difficult to adequately explain what this place meant to us who spent so much of our personal and professional time here. The personal was professional at Vulcan, and vice versa.

I started my first account at Vulcan nearly 15 years ago as a little baby bird college student, greedily scouring the Director’s Wall, Horror, Cult, Romcom, and vintage 1970s porn sections for noted classics and hidden gems alike. I finished school, left Austin, and spent some lovely years in Chicago and Houston. Eventually I relocated back to Austin, missing like hell the unique film culture of this town - which is to say, missing places like Vulcan.

I was barely settled in ATX before immediately flocking to Vulcan’s South location to renew my account (and eat crow on some outstanding late fees, naturally), grab some fresh rentals (I still remember the titles: Abel Ferrara’s NEW ROSE HOTEL and the Sterling Hayden-brandishes-a-harpoon western TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN), and sheepishly inquire as to whether or not they were hiring. I was politely told to drop off a resume and a list of my favorite movies and directors.

I did just that, quietly anguishing over whether or not my film taste would be wide-reaching and, gulp, “cool” enough for the likes of the Vulcan brigade. I need not have worried, as the lovely souls who worked there were as far from the hipper-than-thou, HIGH FIDELITY-esque taste gatekeepers as you could fathom. They just liked movies. A night working at Vulcan could just as easily see us playing a block of Adam Sandler comedies as it could see us cozying up to Ingmar Bergman’s chamber dramas - very likely I was bopping along to JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS or ROLLER BOOGIE or an Abbott and Costello vehicle for the umpteenth time. We just like movies. Watching them, talking about them, learning from them, getting turned on by them, diving into them.

Our customers showed all stripes - Old Austin nutbags who will die before they ever sign up for a Netflix account, professional couples eager to get a little weird and unwind to Tobe Hooper’s catalogue, parents showing their kids STAR WARS for the first time, socially awkward young men discovering the forbidden pleasures of Paul Schrader, rocker chicks touting the brilliance of Penelope Spheeris, and even new Austin transplants who wanted nothing more than to take home the Criterion edition of Linklater’s SLACKER and glimpse a time capsule of an Austin that no longer exists and of which Vulcan remained a defiantly stubborn relic. It’s a bittersweet truth that an honest to god video store operating in the 21st century is by definition an oxymoron, and our customers kept us alive during location moves, shitty weather, stressful management transitions, and, most recently, the unavoidable reality of COVID-19. From our quickly establishing social distance protocols to phone orders and curbside service, our customers rolled with the punches and didn’t blink at the daily changing new normals. “Yeah, yeah, phone orders, curbside, I gotcha. So do y’all have RIO BRAVO? I’m right outside the front door.”

I’ve seen my share of personal ups and downs since moving back to Austin. Vulcan has been the one constant. In recent months, I even got to help manage the place. What a dream, and an honor, and a privilege.

The humble little life I’ve made for myself these past four years has enjoyed Vulcan and the people there as the beating heart: friendships made and flourished, relationships sparked, good days and bad, many beers enjoyed and an eventual, long-overdue sobriety gently nourished and encouraged by customers and coworkers. We danced and skated and laughed and screamed and stayed up late and drove each other home and met each other’s family and spouses and kids and ate many, many pizzas. And we watched movies. It was a small little community we made for ourselves, probably not much by the look of it on the outside, but it was weird and silly and fun and stupid and it was beautiful and it was ours.

This place was our home, our library, our bar, our basement, our little cultural oasis in an increasingly arid world of stale mediocrity. I feel immense gratitude for having been able to play a small part in a big story, but most of all for the friendships forged with all of you wonderful weirdos.

Heart is broken. We knew this was a possibility, but it still stings and hurts, and there’s no small amount of numb shock and impotent frustration. There are still many questions to be asked with little answers to receive at this moment. But we’ll do our best. We sure as shit didn’t do it for the money.

Be safe. Wash your hands. Invest in physical media. Support local businesses in any way you financially and healthily can. It’s chaos, be kind. Live long and prosper. DuJour means friendship. Be excellent to each other. Keep on livin’.

Thank you. For everything.

Now go watch a movie.

[All pictures by Randi Adams, Vulcan’s Marketing/Events Manager]