COVINGTON, Ky. — While the era of the video rental store has passed the world by, one man is single-handedly trying to bring it back, in a small way, in Northern Kentucky.

What You Need To Know

  • Covington man sets up Blockbuster video boxes

  • It works on an honor system of take a movie, leave a movie

  • These are the first boxes in Kentucky, but they are popping up around the country

  • They are also putting boxes in Cincinnati

Outside of Earth to Kentucky in downtown Covington sits a little time machine designed to take people back to the days of old.

Local artist Shadow Woolf put it there.

“You know I do still have strong memories as a little kid of going to the video store with my family, and then all of a sudden that was gone. And I think a big part of me really missed that. And a lot of us do,” Woolf said. “I just thought it was a cool concept to give something back to the community that a lot of people don’t get to experience anymore.”

Woolf took an old magazine box, and turned it into a little free Blockbuster. It’s kind of like a little free library, which has become a popular trend, but features movies instead of books.

“So the rules are that you leave a movie and take a movie. If you take a look in here we have vhs tapes, DVDs, some little toys, sometimes video games. Anything that you might have found at a video rental store, you know back in the 90s or 2000,” Woolf said. “So people can come along, pick out something that maybe you haven’t watched in a long time, and leave some things that you might’ve tossed out or taken to the thrift store. Someone else might pick it up and love it.”

The process wasn’t hard, Woolf said. He just had to find old magazine boxes, most of which around the city weren’t being used, he said. He reached out to businesses like Earth to Kentucky to make sure they’d be OK with having the boxes outside.

To make them, he downloaded stencils from FreeBlockbuster.org,  a grassroots volunteer movement.

While Woolf is the first to do this in Kentucky, free Blockbuster boxes have been popping up around the country, set up by others who miss the time when the video rental store was the place to be.

They’re now close to extinction, with only one legitimate Blockbuster remaining in the country. All Family Video stores that were once in Kentucky and elsewhere in the country closed for good earlier this year.

But nostalgia is a powerful thing, and Woolf said he thinks this idea could be part of a rental renaissance.

“I think with streaming services, we kind of freeze up a little bit. You know there’s so many options. So I like the fact that you can come here. You have a limited amount of stuff to pick from, and again you might discover something that you wouldn’t find on Netflix or Hulu,” he said. “People miss being able to hold those movies and have some sort of a physical connection and to be able to view their collection in that way.”

Woolf also placed two Blockbuster boxes in Cincinnati, and said he plans to do a few more.