Interview:
Macy Cotton,
board chair,
Beau Harris,
technical director/board member,
We Luv Video
Miss the days when you could wander around I Luv Video or Vulcan Video for hours in search of the most intriguing movies to take home to watch over the course of a weekend? We Luv Video is offering a return to the pre-streaming ritual of going to your local video store to scan shelves filled with new, old, and cult movies or to ask clerks for their obscure recommendations. Dedicated to the preservation of home video physical media culture, We Luv Video is a non-profit revival of I Luv Video, the Austin institution that Conrad Bejarano opened in 1983 but closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than sell I Luv Video’s 120,000 items of physical media, Bejarano agreed to rent-to-own his vast collection of Blu-Rays, DVDs, VHS cassettes, etc. to married couple Macy Cotton and Ryan Teel, the driving force behind We Luv Video. Inspired by a handful of video libraries outside of Texas that employ a non-profit model, Cotton and Teel launched a successful crowd-sourcing campaign in late 2022 that generated the funds not just to obtain the I Luv Video collection but also to lease and remodel a storefront at 100 N Loop Blvd E, Unit A, which local lovers of physical media may remember as the location of the now-defunct Vulcan Video North. We Luv Video opened July 29 with approximately 30,000 items of physical media from the I Luv Video collection available to check-out daily, with plans to add more or to rotate titles. The video library also boasts a 25-seat theater that houses a vast curated collection of VHS cassettes. Air: Aug. 9, 2023. Web sites: https://www.weluvvideo.org/ https://www.facebook.com/weluvvideo |
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