But first: this amazing strawberry matcha Einspanner!
And I had this drink with me while I finally got to peruse Kim’s Video at Alamo Drafthouse!!
But first, you ask: what’s Kim’s Video??
Kim’s Video, founded by Yongman Kim, was a video rental store with six stores throughout New York’s Manhattan. It first opened in 1987 on Avenue A and it’s last location closed in 2014 on 1st Avenue. It’s most renown location, Mondo’s Kim with over 55,000 film titles, closed in 2009.
The former fact is super fun for personal reasons and the latter fact totally sucks because I was actually living in New York in 2014 and if I had known the last location was closing, I would’ve stopped by!
If anything, maybe I heard but I wasn’t aware it was the last store standing.
I was a little aware of the store and I suppose, because I didn’t have a VHS player at the time, (back at my mom’s home, we had/have one), I didn’t venture out. But I loved knowing that there was a store in which you could rent strange, rare, bizarre, hard to find movies. It bothers me that I never visited because I actually love shit like Kim’s Video and it’s curation of underground art. I’m really surprised it bypassed me.
The once existence of Kim’s Video is right up there with a diner that used to be right on Astor Place (near the iconic cube), and what used to be a K-Mart and I believe today is a Wegman’s. For me, there are so many sights and sounds of a 2010s New York City that no longer exist.
Sometimes, I miss them a lot whenever I’m in certain areas of the city.
Kim’s Video was the stuff of legend for its unsusal catalog and became even more legendary when the entire catalog was secured by the government of Salemi, Italy.
It was a bit insane that the collection was going to be so far away from its core audience of American cinephiles, as New York University had reportedly placed a bid to store Kim’s collection was word was out that Mondo’s was closing. And that would’ve been oh so perfect as NYU has a storied film department and New York remains prime for filmmaking and aspiring artists. (Even with the rent hikes).
Once containers upon containers and boxes of the films were delivered to its Salemi warehouse, they were then virtually unseen and for sure un-rented by the public.
In short, it was a disaster of a deal that didn’t follow through on Salemi’s end, because according to them, members of Kim’s Video would still have access to rent and access the collection. But Salemi made it difficult to even visit the location of the films. (Not to mention, Salemi is a sleepy Italian town outside of Sicily, and not as accessible for most of Kim’s former renters. Did the Salemi government just assume that Americans had bread to drop and go to Salemi whenever they felt like renting a B-movie from 1970-something for ol’ times sake instead of just watching a shitty copy of it on Dailymotion?
Today, we have streaming services like Tubi and Kanopy to watch such estoric gems (I’ve saved a bunch on my Watchlist! And, tea: Amazon Prime actually hosts a ton of “weird” and underground film too. Like Frakenhooker?!?!)
But Alamo Drafthouse, at one of their Manhattan locations, has a room of videos from Mondo Kim’s in which you can rent (for free!) Nothing but VHS tapes like back in the day! Like, it’s 1990-something!
Alamo even provides VHS players you can rent!!
I’ve known for awhile that Alamo had a portion of the collection and I’ve been wanting to see it since. Recently, I was finally able to see it in person, to make up for all the years I visited and eventually lived in New York and but never made it to Kim’s.
Big love to Alamo for helping to maintain a piece of New York City subculture through Kim’s. What treat to have access again to so many films that we almost lost to isolation. And Kim’s Video was/is one of a handful of movie shops and rental stores that cater to not just the strange and underappreciated in filmmaking but the VHS format too.
In my research, I’ve discovered other such shops across America, past and present, similar to Kim’s. Do you possibly have one in your town like Kim’s? Video renting is such a relic of the past and such shops are keeping the vibe alive!
- Rocket Video in Los Angeles, CA
- Scarecrow Video in Seattle, WA
- The VU in Boston, MA
- Vulture Video in Bloomington, ID
- Movie Madness in Portland, OR
There’s also a documentary on the store simply titled Kim’s Video. And while of course the story of Kim’s Video is beyond worthy of a documentary, the film really drags in the middle and I hated that Istarted to get bored. It had a lot of filler footage to me of the documentarians trying to find Salemi officials to ask about the collection and later, the eventual theft of the videos to bring them back to the U.S. That part, I wasn’t mad at. Like, bring back our movies! But when the film lagged, gosh. I found the 2012 Village Voice article much more exhilarating about the saga of what happened to the film collection. Like, your girl was SAT reading that article.
It was awesome perusing the titles. I just might entertain renting out a movie or two the next time I return!
There’s still so much love for physical media! If only we had the room sometimes! Let’s do the best we can to store what’s left and added. Or, to donate thoughtfully! We’re lucky to still have these pieces of media and art.
Lavish Rebellion [DOT COM] 
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