DVD Killed the Video Store

Not that Video Universe, Village, Home, and Panorama, and other businesses are elaborate fronts for the adult room. GLBT, foreign, black-and-white, African-American (a.k.a. "urban")--you can find more of any of these genres at the neighborhood stores. And the neighborhoods need these shops, which are often alone in the industry for not requiring their customers to leave credit-card imprints.

"I'm on my ninth copy of The Mack," Becker laughs. "Because the people who think they're watching the lifestyle they want to embrace think they're making some kind of blow against the empire by stealing said tape. Prison movies are the same way."

Michael Dvorak

If 'Beethoven' and 'Benji the Hunted' aren't back on the shelves, I'm going for the jugular: Nicollet Village Video owner Chris Becker and his staff late-fee collector

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More About

• Chris Becker
• Nicollet Village Video
• Scott Prost
• Steve McClellan
• Chuck Hanson

Becker served time himself--two years for attempted possession of a controlled substance. "I had a wife that was sick and dying of MS," he says. "And I got talked into walking into a hotel room in Eagan where the only guy that didn't have a badge and a gun was me."

If the checkout clerks in blue shirts have a better story that that, I'll eat my Panasonic.