There's a Video Monster in Town...

I've recently moved into a new place in Gastown, and one of the reasons in the "pro" column I composed was the existance of this little video store right downstairs. Yeah, there's no disguising how lame that looks on the page; a video store? Well, this video store has since been written up in The Globe and Mail, and I live above it. In a couple years I might be all "I knew the place before it got big and sold out to become the next Blockbuster franchise... they were so cool when they were indie..."

Having just moved in, I'm still waiting on Telus' slow moving union ass to install my DSL next week, so I headed out to find myself a nice place with comfortable seating, coffee, and food in addition to free wireless internet. I couldn't pick up a consistent free wireless signal in the apartment, but there's web pages to update and blog entries to write, and contract work to do. Video Monster (35 Powell) has all that and it would appear to be the new place to hang out, as I ran into Beyond Robson's own Ariadna this morning on my very first visit.

I'm a sucker for movies, and anything that keeps me from having to buy DVDs is a good thing. They could be unfriendly or even abusive and the fact that they're right downstairs would keep me coming back. The membership is available for $8 and there's an interesting selection of DVDs, so it's a decent deal right there without anything else thrown in to the deal. As they say on late night infomercials; "But wait, there's more!"

Nice people, good DVD selection, comfortable seating, excellent grilled sandwiches, and a big screen with a digital projector for playing movies. This isn't The Blinding Light that used to occupy the space, but the Video Monsters don't really mind being mistaken for that old Vancouver institution.

There are gaming and sports events hosted on the big screen for members, and there's a movie playing every night on the big screen that members can attend for free. I'm thinking how great it would be to roll your own film festival and screen it here.