Opportunity Knocks When You Least Expect It. (subtitled Regrets, I've had a few)

As much as I have been disappointed, and I am pretty sure others are disappointed by me, every so often, something shines through.

One of my great fears about being away from the stores is that I will fall behind in knowledge of trends, industry advances, issues, and activities. I will get stale, and that will lead to disappointment in myself. I already have that.

Add to that the upcoming surgery, and my worries about my dad's health, and it becomes a very stressful time. Sometimes it leads to anger, sometimes to misplaced frustration, sometimes to regret.

However, I just got the possibility of something that really isn't pay based for now, bur sweat equity will go a long way to achieving my goal of staying sharp.

So, focus is brought by this possibility, and also a bit of regret that my previous rant leaned too hard on my frustation and anger, and ignores many of the great times that I enjoyed there, like:


• An amazing trio of instore appearances. We had someone from the Motown Rhythm Section to promote STANDING IN THE SHADOW OF MOTOWN. We had porn stars Sunset Thomas and Ron Jeremy in store.

• By far, the biggest was an appearance by John Waters that lasted three hours, and attracted well over 600 people, and more turned away.

• The music that I learned about there, by listening to what the staff was playing.

• The customers who came through and made the day that much easier.

• The day we opened with the remodel. I was so freaking proud.

• The shout out to me at the 2001 VSDA Convention in Las Vegas

• Being named Employee of the Year in 2007.

• Being named GM in 2007.

• The South Street nights, which were always interesting.

• People like Questlove and Sean Lennon coming in.

• Having a documentary/promo piece called THE BURIED SECRET OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN shot partially in the store. This was directed by the Oscar winning director, Nathaniel Kahn. I even have an IMDB page.

• Finding out that the original ROCKY was shot partially in our building.

• The coming together of the staff and the neighborhood on 9/11

• The nights out with the staff.

• The pride that I got to take about TLA and the stores to the various industry events that I attended.

• Achieving the ultimate in the industry during my time there by being elected to national board of the VIDEO SOFTWARE DEALERS ASSOCIATION helping to launch its independent wing, IDEA.

• Time spent talking with the partners during my days there, even when I was frustrated.

• I’ve left the best for last. The many staff people that I worked alongside of every year. I love them.

• And the best of the best is Kennie Bowen, the person who I could not have done without these past nine years.

So, this offer, while not paying, is opportunity, experience, and endless possibilities in a business that I’ll always love.

The only thing better will be if I can find a way to take this great staff along with me for the ride.

Thanks to all who love me or hate me right now, because I still do love all of you.

We all have an impact on each other, and each of us have some good impact on the rest.

And in the end, I would much rather be friends than enemies with anyone, because long term, it just doesn't work.

Tonight's the night. Ya gotta believe.

I'll be at my brother's house tonight, with my Dad and little brother ,Tommy, watching game 5, and what I believe will be the game that sends the Phillies to the World Series.

Just like many of you. I fully expect to hear all of you banging pots and pans and making a great noise to celebrate.

Let's go, Phillies!

The Darkness That Was South Street, Gone Like VHS

I am going to jump out of chronological order because of the devastating news that one of my old stores has closed.

So, the story continues where the story is about to end.

After more than 24 respected and entertaining years of great home entertainment, a lack of vision will end the glorious vision that once was TLA Video 4th ST / South Street / Society Hill / Philly.

I'll preface this by saying that I still beleive in what once was TLA Video, very strongly. I think the concept was and forever will be great if supported. I am simply disappointed in where this has landed, and strongly believe that it didn't have to be.

One last visit before they turn it into the horror of a giant video flea market / bone picking. Trust me, you won’t enjoy the atmosphere. Hell, it won’t have an atmosphere, not like it had once upon a time.

I first encountered Vid One when I was deciding if I wanted to come to work for TLA Video. I parked on South Street, in front of PhilaDeli, and walked around. When I entered, I saw a store in 2000 that looked like a store in 1985. Even at the early stage of the DVD rollout, I saw a store that was still resisting change from VHS. I saw a small sales area, I saw porn, and was surprised to see that the film on the monitor was played silent, and music playing instead.

I also saw Kennie. My first impression was “Why is he playing music in a video store?” That never made sense to me, because TLA didn’t sell music. Turns out that was one of many “different” corporate edicts.

I also saw Kennie, by himself at the counter, working hard, which was a sight that I would see for nine more years.

I took the job and the first day of work was spent introducing myself to a staff that hadn’t seen an actual store manager in a long time, despite the parade of people TLA had put in there as store managers, some useless to a capital “U”.

After being grilled with questions that at times felt like “Why the hell are you subjecting yourself to this?”, I realized that I had a great staff in a neglected store. As I would find out many times later, growth didn;t seem to be paramount to what they wanted. Profit had to be achieved on a bit of a shoe string, despite being the pre-eminent independent video store chain in Philly.

I started to realize the first of many “TLA mistaken identities”, that I felt that I was really there to close the store down. It truly felt that way. The look of the store had not been updated since Philo T. Farnsworth was making TV’s. The attitude of the staff was one of doing their job extremely well, but knowing that job had what seemed to be a shelf date, a limited life span.

I didn’t need to change the attitude of the staff, we needed to change the attitude of the owners.

Once they got over their skepticism, I truly believed that they now believed that someone actually cared about the store as more that a place for them to bring their friends and showing how they owned this place. They owned it, but I and the staff tried to grow it.

When I went there, I was promised that there would be a remodel, and hell, the place needed it. This was August 2000. Business started to grow, the staff grew with the changes, and finally , three YEARS later, they decided to do the remodel themselves(why pay for real craftsmen when you have a wannabe contractor owning the place).

In any case, in 2003, the store now almost looked updated to the year 1995. The store responded with good sales, a great clientele, and a strong staff with a solid, great constant: Kennie. We worked our asses off is the only way that we can put it when you talk about how we did it.

All through this, we were given essentials for day to day, but never given anything with a vision to tomorrow. They were content to live on the laurels of what the TLA name had meant, and seemed to have no real desire to enhance that name in the stores. The boss and I talked about one idea that he had a few years ago that was very exciting, but it was never pursued. I think that idea would have been a home run.

This was also the time when I would first see the signs of the slight of hands that some would sometimes utilize to seemingly not fulfilling promises. About a year after I arrived, and even after being thanked from the Las Vegas stage by one of The Powers during the VSDA Video Convention when TLA won Store Of The Year (Yo, powers, did you ever put two and two together and realize that I was the reason you received that award?), a position opened up.

Imagine my surprise when the General Manager position was open in 2001, a position that had been said to be mine when available, and it was given to a useless refugee from West Coast Video instead of me. The many reasons given to me were all of the phony noble variety, not that I didn’t deserve it, but that I was more valuable where I was. That is because everyone else could smell what would come along at Vid One in the future.

Other sometimes short-sighted efforts included starting a subscription plan based on the then-current General Managers concept. We started this monthly plan, and to this day (10.21.2009), I still cannot give you a solid look at how it actually impacted us.

This was the start of the change in attitude that it felt we had to compete on price and not on confidence, moving us into a price competition that I don;t beleive we fully understood and I believe never executed properly. The ideas put forth were not the problem, they were great ideas. My concern was execution and support.

This was also the time that we started to test home delivery. Of course, the owners and theGM set up delivery for the entire downtown area, for three store locations, with ONE delivery person. Then, they expected that to be efficient.

In 2006, in a shuffle that is still incomprehensible, I was moved to another great store in Chestnut Hill. Kennie, who was very attuned to what a TLA manager job really meant, reluctantly accepted the managers position. Of course, it isn’t that cut and dried. Kennie still had to do his old position, as well. The South Street store was essentially told that they were not worthy of having the same hierarchy of the rest of the stores. We had an excellent GM who had promoted from another store, and then to clueless one.

For 4 years, Kennie did a super human job of making this odd combo work. Of course, the more that it worked, the more they would ask him to do, and be amazed if it couldn’t be accomplished.

I got to spend the last 2 and ½ years at TLA as the GM and Buyer. We used to have a GM, a buyer for rental, and a buyer for sale. I became all three. Kennie did his best, and the store still turned a profit, despite no improvements being made to both physical plant and the selection. Advertising was spotty, and then it was invisible. Office support was sparse at best.

However, I loved my job, loved the stores, and loved TLA, and tried very hard to do my best.

Now, one month after they decided that the stores didn’t need a GM/Buyer/Supply Delivery Guy and let me go in another acute lack of vision, they have five people doing my job.

Fortunately, I don’t have to be there for what I believe is an unnecessary closing, one reflective of their listening to people that I believe do not know what to actually do with the stores.

Competition is blamed, when competition is what make you better, but only if you are smart enough to compete.

TLA Video South Street competes no more, it sighs and watches it’s history being sold as if it was unloved toys at a garage sale. People will be picking at the bones like the worst buffet. This is not relective of the quality of the stock or the staff who will be there, it is reflective of what atmosphere these sales always bring, it cannot help but be an intense and exhausting experience.

Unfortunately, I cannot be there when I should be, to help in this most difficult time.

We had great years there, and the staff was the main reason. Until this past Monday, they were still the reason to choose TLA Video Stores as your choice for perfect home entertainment in Philly. Now, that choice is gone from your lives, and the other Vids may or may not soon follow.

I’ve previously mentioned a poster by the 5th Floor Elevator at the main office that showed the history of TLA up to the opening of the New York store. It is a magnificent and fascinating frozen moment in time, but sadly now means little to me, because what TLA is now has so very little relationship to the glory that it once was. TLA may morph into a different glory, and I would be as happy as anyone to see my friends thre continue on.

TLA has become narrowly boring in the product compared to how I knew it, and a bit farther from what TLA was once known for. They seem to follow the advice of people who may mean well, but who I believe have little clue as to how to compete in the physical retail arena, and have convinced them to take this is a very different direction. You can lay any notion of TLA as synonymous with great and knowledgeable film to a little bit less voracity. That TLA grows just a bit dimmer, and only lives on at the store level, which now decreases by 25%. However, in the remaining stores, it still shines brightly, and their staffs are a huge part of that.

I urge you strongly to continue to support them.

The last domino may fall. Still, there will always be the best and wonderful efforts of Kennie, Marianne, Jim, Griffin, Vicky, and the rest of a dream staff.

That last domino takes the last real and true home video experience on South Street away forever.

My Video Life: First Stop. 1983-85

The world of home video was very different from what it is today. When I joined VIDEO WONDERLAND in Adrmore, PA in 1983, the world was VHS and Beta, and the tech advances were few. So was quality control. Video tapes ran in lengths of T-30, T-60, T-90. T-120, and T-127.

The sound on VHS tapes was linear, and the advent of the VHS HiFi systems, with improved stereo sound was in its infancy.

I remember that the studios were not great at quality control, evidenced by the fact SUPERMAN THE MOVIE, which ran 144 minutes, was time compressed to fit on a 127 minute tape. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS was shrunk from 115 minutes to 90 minutes.

Video Wonderland was run by two people, Johnny and Ron. Lets say that a love/hate relationship between then was too gentle a term. They were always at each others throats. It made my two years there interesting.

We stocked every video that was ever released, and I got to learn about a lot of films as well as the love of those films, which I’ve carried with me for life. It is not a condescending love, like some at my other jobs, but just a love of the joy of watching a film, especially for the first time.

I worked up to managing their one store, which moved to a much larger location up the street, and working with them to try to start a franchise.

To keep the reading light, I’ll bullet point some of the highlights/lowlights:

· The day after the Motown 25 special ran on NBC, I got to see the bosses wife delude herself into thinking that she could moonwalk. If she had actually been on the moon, it still wouldn’t work.

· I caught my first bootlegger and had him locked up. He was buying cases of bargain basement videos, copying our tapes, changing the labels, and sending back the copies. The clues came together when he complained that his VCR audio wasn’t working, and he left it for us to repair. This was at the time that I was investigating a number of our tapes having bad sound. Two and Two meant he was a thief. He would not be my first collar for piracy.

· I saw my first X-rated game for ATARI, which was essentially the KABOOM game, but you had a guy on top of a roof whacking off while hookers ran below trying to catch his droppings.

· We moved to a larger location that was wonderful. Still concentrated on VHS and Beta, not Laser or CED. This was also a problem going forward wherever I work, reluctance to actually think outside the box in this business, which is why my last job seems to be shy of Blu-ray.

· This location had two show windows that we used as stages at times. We would be open all night Saturday, and Mr. Movie, Steve Friedman from 1210AM would do a live broadcast. We sold a ton of videos all across the country from these events. Sadly, Steve passed way last month.

· I began to write a Childrens Video column for an industry tip sheet called VIDEO INSIDER. This lasted to about 1988 or so. In my time there, I interviewed MisterRogers, Shari Lewis, Ithzak Perlman, Raffi, almost met Frank Zappa, and many others at industry conventions.

· Johnny had a friend named Paul, who was a bit like George Costanza, in that he always had a scheme. One time, during the Cabbage Patch craze, he got his hands on 100 black market dolls, and we had to sell them. We had a line of over 100 waiting to fight over these, even though they were printed in China. People bitched.

· Johnny would have a directors chair by the adult room, and he would sit there to say hello, and eventually fall asleep. All the customers would be extra quiet, so as not to wake him.

· I met many sales people there who would move onto bigger and better things. David Bishop and Joel Goldman, now with Sony Pictures, were my Schwartz Brothers Distributors reps. Dennis Maguire, who move high up in Disney, was the local Disney rep. Joe Amodie with Virgil Films. Plenty of current movers and shakers started there.

· I learned a ton of things there from the people who came through. The distributors had offices very close by in South Jersey, so I met a lot of them every Tuesday,

· I used to carry my keys on one of those retractable chains. There was a boy about 8 or so, who would come in and liked to follow me around, but one day, he discovered how funny it would be to pull the chain down and then release it very quickly.

· We got to witness the celebration for the Villanova Wildcats NCAA Basketball win in 1985.

· At the middle of 1985, the owners decided to sell to Wet Coast Video, run by Elliot Stone. Suffice it to say that I hated all that this version of West Coast Video stood for.

· This was not a happy time for me, because this was a contentious sale, the two sides were both manipulating the other, and one of the WCV staff almost had me beat the crap out of him. After much dancing around, the sale took place, with the proviso that the stock in the store, the stock that I was so proud of and was our reputation, would remain intact.

· That didn’t happen. As soon as the sale took place, WCV started to empty the store of over half the stock. I did not see eye to eye with the WCV guy who was assigned to do the transition (though over the years, I’ve come to like him). We battled everyday, and he even fired my sister, who worked there, as a way of showing me who was boss. Since they were not keeping up their end of the bargain, I decided not to stay, which led to a year of litigation to get my final pay.

These are just a few of the things that happened. These occurred over 25 years ago, so some other details go vague.

Some constants and parallels with my just downsized job are evident, though. Here I had multiple owners who did not have the same mindset, and their differences meant that when times were good , things were good. But when times got tougher, they had no clues.

Deja Vu.

I had many of the answers, but none of the control, so what was a brief shinning Wonderland became a dank, cookie cutter West Coast Video.

After a month and a major shouting match, I moved onto something that held so much promise, but was done in by different forces, MOVIE WORLD in Roxborough (Philly)

Coming soon-- 1985-1993: THE MOVIE WORLD YEARS : NORWEGIAN WOOD

Of VHS and Laser Disc, my life in home video before my livelihood in Home Video: Part One

Haven’t posted in a bit, so let’s get ready to ramble a bit.

I bought my first VCR, a Panasonic PV-1000A, back in 1979. $799, 2 speeds, heavy as a mother.
Never owned BETA, though I had friends who swore by it.

I did have one friend who actually owned a 1 inch reel to reel machine. I think we had to travel to a place called LERRO ELECTRONICS on North Broad Street to get reels. He made a black and white copy of THE MUSIC MAN, one of my favorite films, on one of these in the mid-1970’s.

First thing I recorded was a HONEYMOONERS episode on the old WKBS Channel 48 in Philly.

Philly had some video pioneers, including a news publication that centered on home video (the name of which escapes me right now).

The one that I read religiously was THE LASER DISC NEWSLETTER, which eventually became THE DVD NEWSLETTER. It was essentially a one man operation, printed tabloid style, but was an extremely informative and detailed publication with tons of new release reviews.

First two videos bought: ROCKY and collection of BEATLES VIDEOS. Yes, both were bootlegs, but this was 1979, and they were about the only thing available. Magnetic Video, MEDA (or MEDIA) HOME ENTERTAINMENT, and EMBASSY were the first home video labels that I remember.

First legit purchase: THE STING. Bought it from Movies Unlimited on Castor Ave, when they were in their tiny store. Also bought HELLO DOLLY (a guilty pleasure, yes). At the time, video rental really didn’t exist. What they did was sell the VHS for $79.95 and give you half credit if you traded it for another VHS. If I remember correctly, MOVIES UNLIMITED started with Super 8MM films.

In 1980 (I think, though it could have been a year earlier), I saw my first Laser Disc demo at a hotel in Bristol PA. Laser Disc was like a DVD on steroids. It was introduced in a limited market in the beginning (Atlanta, I think), before going national. I had a laser disc player, but it was always bulky. The salesman demoed a boat blowing up from JAWS 2. In slow mo, you could see an explosive dropped into the boat to make it explode. The shark was impressive, the movie, meh….

Laser Disc aficionados had a side hobby, as well. Whether through laziness or efficiency, some laser discs didn’t use the second side of a disc for program material. However, they would still press them with content from another entirely different film, and then block it with a chemical cover. People would trade or buy discs to use alcohol to remove the cover and see what film was under there, kind of any early EASTER EGG.

I also had an RCA CED player, or NEEDLEVISION. Because the cost was a bit cheaper, I had about 80 movies on CED, including THE BEATLES LET IT BE, which has yet to see a legit release on DVD. Sold them a long time ago to a collector. I though it was cool when I went to Disney World in the mid 80’s and saw a CED player in the lead-up to SPACE MOUNTAIN (which was sponsored by RCA at the time).

Price of a 2 hour blank VHS tape? $20.

First real attempt that I remember at true rental and sell through: FOTOMAT, the little film processing kiosks. Paramount had a releasing deal with them, and the first one that I remember was GREASE.

I was very meticulous with my VHS tapes at the time, until it became too much. It is amazing how much I recorded considering that Philly didn’t have cable, so we had essentially 7 TV stations.

In 1983, the bug bit me, and in February of 1983, I wound up working in the video retail business. That led to almost 27 glorious years that is now in suspended animation, but will definitely be resumed with an entity that really wants to do home entertainment correctly.

Coming soon, 1983-85 THE “VIDEO WONDERLAND” YEARS…

…MORE TO COME…

What's behind me? More than you would expect.

While I’ve been organizing my thoughts and my accomplishments, trying to get them to be impressive while still the proper length, it really becomes a trip down memory lane, bittersweet at times, exhilarating at others.

The trouble with resumes are that they are list of facts, and facts don’t quite cut it all the time, so this blog will get the duty/pleasure/burden of fleshing it out, and showing you both what I have done and can do, but also who and what has had the greatest impact on me over the years.

Obviously, since video retailing has been my world since 1983, it is the prime focus, but when I get the urge, you’ll meet a much younger me and my foibles and learning curve.

So, despite my confused and frustrated ramblings over the last few posts, which are drawn from my dealing with the “disappointment” of my last place of employment, things still look up.

And I promise to include some purely fun posts, as well as some that will hopefully make you want to be my friend as well as my employer/partner.

I’ll be very good.






…more to come…

Who says a story has to be linear?

In the hallway by the 5th Floor Elevator in an office now far far away, there is a damaged poster that traces the history of the TLA stores. It was made before I arrived, and it is fascinating to see the pride that is shown for those stores and that history. It ends with photos of the then new store on 8th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Someone in charge recently called it “walking down memory lane” when some talked to them about the stores.

There were no updates. This poster is frozen in time. Apropos.

So, let’s walk down Memory Lane, and over time, you will see why I loved TLA once, and what I truly believed TLA could have been and what video retailing can be far into the future.

So, it is the year 2000, March.

I was involved with putting on trade shows for video retailers through what was then known as VSDA, then became EMA, then split the indie retailers off into IDEA, then pulled them back because we didn’t suit their purposes as an independent wing (I’m shutting up now on this subject).

We had built a show that was held on the University of Newark (Delaware) Business Center, and drew over 100 East Coast retailers. For two years, I built this conference/trade show, and it attracted the powerful and the good video retailers as well as drew the eye of retail competition.

It was here where I first met the TLA group and was approached about coming over to them. At the time, West Coast Video was in the middle of a possible sale to a sad sack of a chain called Video City, as well as a changeover in software. As I’ve mentioned previously, I can trip over my loyalty with the best of them, so I turned them down.

5 months later, even a dumbass like myself could recognize the bad decision, so I made the move, and was installed in the South Street Store of TLA Video. There I met a great staff, led by Kennie, but I also felt a store that seemed to just be living out its days. The store was “funky décor”, which meant it hadn’t been updated for years and I started to question why I was there, because I had nothing to offer a store that simply was there to exist.

Thanks to a great staff, though, it made sense to question and ask. When I came over, I was told that they were going to remodel it. This was August 2000. If I told you that the remodel finally happened in the end of 2003, you would get why I felt at times like I was in a deathwatch.

Add to that a reluctance to embrace DVD, and change would be hard. That same reluctance is now being shown towards how to handle Blu-ray.

However, I think my enthusiasm, coupled with the great staff that took great pride in their work and who finally had a manager who gave a damn, made it impossible for that store to go away, and a better store to emerge.

Until I wound up transferred in 2006, I think we made a fantastic team, and the staff there still makes a fantastic store.

The next year, at the 2001 VSDA Convention, TLA Video won Retailer Of The Year. From the stage, the partner who accepted made a special thank you to me, a very prominent shout-out.

That may have been my proudest moment, not because it recognized me, but because I felt that I had changed their attitude, changed their mindset, and had breathed new life in a business, which is what any ambitious and driven person wants.

I didn’t get that feeling many more times after that. When the GM position became available later that year, I was told that either they didn’t give me the job because they needed me at that store (the old “you are too good to promote” gotcha) , that my need to care for my brother meant time concerns, or that they had this other person who they wanted who they felt could do the job. She lasted less than a year.

This was the first sign that this would be a difficult stay, one with great memories until the last one.

As of this writing, the South Street store is still alive and still has a great staff lead by Kennie. It has also been noted that it still looks like a store from the 90’s recently. The staff makes that a good thing, and I encourage you to postpone your Duckboat ride and your Jim’s Cheesesteaks and meet one of the reasonsI survived TLA for so long, the great staff of a TLA Video store.

BTW, for those who believe that the video industry has moved past a real life store, and some of them are still there, recognize this.

Back in 2000, there were a lot of video stores and competition was tough. There were very few websites that sold videos, so opportunity was there for something unique. Over time, the internet has been flooded with merchants who have to differentiate themselves without the human element, they have to fake it.

In that same time, many brick and mortar video retailers (call us "mom and pop" and I'll beat the shit out of you) have gone away, because it is easy to blame the marketplace when it is actually the stubbornness to grow and adapt.

It used to be easy to earn money in home video retailing quite by accident. Now, you have to think, adapt, and grow. That took a bit of faith, a bit of guts, a lot of experience, and no fear of the future. It took and takes someone like me.

The physical video store is now unique again, while websites are everywhere. The uniqueness of the physical video store now is that you can still be real life, but add the web elements to extend your stores experience and ability to engage your customer. You can have the customer in your store even when they are not there, and they can interacte with a real staff and not an algorithm.

You can still make an amazing brick and mortar store, but you have to want it, be ready to expand the rules, and love doing it. I do.

You can remember the past, you can embrace the past, but you have to recognize how to successfully grow them for the future. Video stores can still be that future, and a major player in it,