Dear Editor:
Shlockbuster Video in Lower Lonsdale has been given notice that the building is going to be demolished for condos and the business will be required to vacate the premises at the end of this month.
I am saddened by this news. The problem is that the owner has not been able to secure a new place for his business to operate for a sustainable amount of money, and this incredible resource for unique, alternative, rare, obscure and generally one-of-a-kind movies will be vacating the premises at the end of December.
The store needs a new home in North Vancouver so that we will continue to have access to a library unrivalled anywhere in Western Canada. The owner is planning to sell his collection on an individual basis if some reasonably priced retail space is not secured. I believe that would be a terrible waste of his collection. It has not yet been recognized that the loss of the private, independent video store is an enormous loss of cultural capital to cities around the world. The standard argument is that it is all available online, which is simply untrue. It requires a lot of effort to get movies online and involves questionable ethics to get them. If any of your readers have looked into Netflix recently they will recognize that the selection is severely restricted.
If anyone in North or West Vancouver has a suggestion as to how we can prevent the loss of a collection of more than 10,000 movies, please help. The North Shore needs this resource.
Mike Clausing North Vancouver
