Longtime Oakland video rental store operator calls it quits
OAKLAND -- The doors will soon be closing for one of the last brick-and-mortar video rental stores in Oakland.
Video Room owner Joseph Lum will soon be packing up his nearly 40,000 wall-to-wall hard copy video collection.
The video store is celebrating 40 years this year, but will be shutting down due to the decline of customers.
"The economics of a video store is daunting especially with the pandemic," Lum said. "We lost over 75 percent of our customers before the pandemic."
Lum says that online video streaming was the beginning of the end, and the pandemic only made it worse.
Longtime customers like Thomas Talamantes say there are things you can find here that you will never find online.
"I think [the closure) it will drastically reduce the color of my life," said Talamantes. "Being able to walk from my apartment down Piedmont Avenue and rent a video and talk to Joe...it will be sad to see him go."
Over the next few weeks Lum will continue to rent and sell his collection, but he's hoping someone will step up to get the phone ringing again.
