27 years: Redux. The resurrection of my video career

The new West Coast Video was auspicious because it was a great idea that came along at a time that the company was in transition. The Stanleys, who owned the company were really nice guys who were not at all prepared for the transition that the industry was about to face.

Frankly, that is the same problem faced by me later on, as well.

The store, at 15th and Walnut was gorgeous. A large, well lit, amazingly stocked video joy. The stock that I loaded it with, along with the West Coast buyer, David Wharff, was the best, I repeat, the best. Originally, we were going to have a coffee bar in there, but the space was a bit too small. That is a shame, because at the time in 2000, that was a very original concept.

The stores were going to be three or four in number, modeled after (but far exceeding) the TLA concept. The Philly store was to be a flagship store, with others in Lexington KY, Princeton, NJ, and on Houston Street in NYC. Those last three never materialized, because of the pending sale to a new owner.

It would have been spectacular, though. All the best that TLA was, but with a much broader customer base: a smart video store for the masses, a store where everyone felt included, everyone found and knew something.

I spent a year commuting from Philly to Hammonton and Sicklerville NJ, to other West Coast and Choices Stores (an acquisition from a video pioneer, Robert Klein) while building this store. My favorite memory was when I travelled with David Wharff amd Steve Randolph, a great guy who was the rep for Universal Video at the time, to NYC to scout out the TLA at 8th Street in the Village (Don't look for it, it was closed sadly two years ago, another great waste).

I saw this magnificient TLA store, and knew that I could do better. I did and continuted to do until 5:15 PM Thursday 9/16/2009.

But, in the tradition of owners who I loved but just didn't get it, things just weren't planned out correctly. I hired a great and quirky staff: one was a sweetheart who would do any job assigned, and another would fight anyone who came along, one hoped to become a comedian with Second City (and could have succeeded, but I lost touch), and one got to star in a MY CHOICE MY WAWA commercial, which then resulted in his picture popping up on static cling ads for hoagies all over WAWA stores, and magically, my store.

Construction took almost a year longer, and they dropped the coffer bar: Big Mistake.

Before the store opened, we loaded almost 30,000 (yes, thousand Redbox has five HUNDRED by comparision, Redbox is bullshit) videos. Most were VHS, but some were DVD, which was in it's 3rd year, but which WCV was not positive about for its success, whcih would be a problem with later employers: not being able to see far enough ahead to see what they need to do. Blu-ray and tentativeness with same will haunt my ex-employers. You cannot do this business correctly following sheepishly).

So, we had the store loaded up, but one problem remained: the alarm system wasn't finished. The bosses had not set up the installation properly, also a bugaboo of my later years. So, I got to spend 3 nights in the store to guard the tapes.

I'll do more specifically on my two years here, including my street fights with shoplifters and anarchists later, but for now, I'll skip to the end, to set up my next chapter. Think of it as any bad Hollywood film that thinks it is too clever to jump the timeline all over the place.

The WCV chain was sold to Video City. Shit, a mistake. Details to follow.

In January 2000, I was approached by TLA to come over. I turned them down. I am nothing if not blindly loyal, and had committed to helping make sure the WCV/Video City conversion went well.

In the summer of 2000, I was approached again. I decided to move, opening up the greatest joy followed by the biggest disappoitment in my career, and yes, much of it follows aligning myself with owner/partners who could be the greatest at times, but turned out to be disappointments.

Watch this space....