overwhelming appetite for physical copies in the streaming era.<\/a><\/p>\nCo-owner Aaron Hamel told The Post his Brooklyn shop \u2014 which slings hundreds of movies on VHS and DVDs each week \u2014 is now looking to stock up on more material to keep up with growing demand, including from a soaring cohort of Gen-Z film fans.<\/p>\n
Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have heaps of regulars, and we have a lot of Gen-Z customers,\u201d co-owner Jess Mills added, noting popular requests include the 2025 Oscar-winning drama \u201cSinners\u201d and David Lynch\u2019s \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d series and 1997 film \u201cLost Highway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we\u2019re trying to even further optimize the space, put more stuff into it \u2014 but if things keep progressing the way that they are, there could be a bigger space in the future,\u201d Hamel said from his 800-square-foot, \u201980s nostalgia-tinged shop.<\/p>\n
Night Owl, which touts the slogan \u201cdeath to streamers\/physical media forever!\u201d will be kicking off its one-year anniversary f\u00eate on Saturday, complete with a weekend-long sale, afterparty and commemorative goodies \u2014 including a VHS \u201cmixtape\u201d cobbled by Hamel himself.<\/p>\n
The celebratory crowd is expected to be as diverse as the shop\u2019s customer base \u2014 which also spans local Gen-Xers and millennials, as well as out-of-towners and even overseas collectors, Mills said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf things keep progressing the way that they are, there could be a bigger space in the future,\u201d Hamel said. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n
Since opening last April, the shop has added multiple shelves of product and expanded its operating hours to seven days a week to feed a steady influx of movie-lovers.<\/p>\n
The duo even hired a new employee last month to run the shop while Hamel spelunks for more oddities.<\/p>\n
Hamel predicted one recent acquisition \u2014 300 New York City skateboarding tapes dating back to the \u201980s purchased from a seller upstate \u2014 will spark a \u201cfeeding frenzy\u201d once they hit the retail floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery section has grown,\u201d said Mills, including trading cards and other film ephemera, \u201cbut the DVDs and VHS [tapes] \u2014 their popularity has been amazing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people have dug out their VHS player\u201d after visiting the quirky shop, Mills said \u2014 although she and Hamel said they knew well before opening that there was an untapped demand for an old-school video store in the Big Apple.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the reasons we opened here is because there wasn\u2019t something dedicated to film New York anymore,\u201d said Mills.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people have dug out their VHS player\u201d after visiting the quirky shop, Mills said. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of [stores] had shut down. So we know there was an audience for it \u2014 but what surprised us is it was much bigger than what we expected.\u201d <\/p>\n
The shop owners recall hearing \u201cevery day\u201d from customers fed up with the cost of subscriptions for streamers, lack of options when movies are pulled from a service, or \u201cboth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA younger generation \u2014 that certainly we\u2019ve found here \u2014 has spent their entire lives in a digital world that\u2019s just gotten worse with time, so I think it definitely makes sense to see that demographic being drawn to physical media,\u201d Hamel said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy favorite thing that a younger person said \u2026 is, VHS is just something that works: there\u2019s no menu, there\u2019s no ads, there\u2019s no anything,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
One of the main generations of repeat customers are Gen Zers, Hamel said. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just put it in, and it\u2019s playing a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other recent favorites include 1988\u2019s \u201cSurviving Edged Weapons\u201d \u2014 the \u201c\u2019Citizen Kane\u2019 of police training videos,\u201d Hamel said \u2013 which he recently screened at documentary filmmaker John Wilson\u2019s micro-moviehouse in Ridgewood, Queens.<\/a><\/p>\nSince opening last April, the duo added multiple shelves of VHS tapes and DVDs. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n
Many of the store\u2019s roughly 12,000 titles \u2014 sold on average for between $10 and $20 \u2014 are bought by Hamel directly from sellers online or in-person, but customers also regularly trade in their VHS, laser discs and even Betamax tapes that are otherwise collecting dust.<\/p>\n
Mills said the trade-in program has yielded both offbeat surprises and bucket-list items.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat happens a lot \u2014 where we really hope we get this thing in, and we pray long enough,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been wanting to see \u201cNapoleon Dynamite\u201d on VHS, and it took us almost the entire year to finally come across one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a blockbuster year for this Brooklyn shop! Night Owl Video, the Big Apple\u2019s sole remaining video…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[98,57,9,197,56,63,65,64,2990,11387,58,1115,1424],"class_list":{"0":"post-192596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-metro","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city-life","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-small-business","17":"tag-streaming","18":"tag-us-news","19":"tag-video","20":"tag-williamsburg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}