They stock the offbeat, the obscure, the seminal, and everything in between - and movie fans can't get enough. In Part Four of
CityNews.ca's five-part series profiling Toronto's top indie video rental shops, we stop into Black Dog Video.
Don't tell the guys at
Black Dog Video that video renting's going out of style - they just moved to a bigger location to accommodate their growing stacks of flicks.
"It was mostly out of necessity," admits co-owner Jeff Elliott, adding that the four-year-old store didn't go far - just one block west on Queen St. The new location opened in December of 2007.
"We were expanding pretty quickly and running out of room over there. The bigger space allows us to lay it out better. We're big on having a beautiful layout, being able to see the artwork on the DVD covers and not having everything sideways."
Black Dog Video is a Vancouver-based chain - there are two locations there in addition to the Toronto one. Elliott's business partner and former roommate Brian Gay, whose brother opened the original Black Dog, decided one day over brunch to open a store in this city.
"(Brian) had always wanted to follow in his brother's footsteps and open a really cool video store in Toronto," Elliott describes.
"A space came open on Queen St., right in the neighbourhood where we wanted to open it because this was where we lived. We got tired of travelling all the way to Queen Video to get videos. It all happened pretty quickly."
The new space features Easy Rider-inspired paintings on the walls by artist John Abrams, a chalkboard where customers rank new releases, a coffee bar, and about 9,000 titles. Elliott admits it's heartening to see that it's still possible for a video store to succeed.
"I think for us it's having that great back catalogue," he suggests. "There's stuff here you can't get at the bigger chain stores. The video-on-demand that's eating away at the video rental market doesn't affect us as much. We spent a lot of time searching out titles you can't find in other places."
The store stocks nearly the entire Criterion Collection, and there's a wall dedicated to important directors - but Elliott insists he and his staff aren't movie snobs.
"What we really wanted to do was focus on having a cool vibe and not that snobby independent video store feel," he says.
"We can supply awesome titles for people but if you want to rent the latest Dane Cook movie we're not going to judge you for it."
Jeff Elliott's Top 5 Essential Viewing:
Annie Hall
Rushmore
The Big Lebowski
La Regle du jeu (The Rules of the Game)
Le Cercle Rouge
The Test
CityNews.ca picked ten hard-to-find films and asked each store if they stocked them. Here's how Black Dog Video measured up:
Harold and Maude - yes
Dog Day Afternoon - yes
The Doom Generation - no
Big Night - yes
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys - yes
The House of Yes - yes
Cinema Paradiso - yes
Brazil - yes (standard and Criterion Collection version)
Five Easy Pieces - yes
City of God - yes
Black Dog Video
986 Queen St. West
416-530-0006
Mon-Fri 8am-11pm
Sat 9am-11pm
Sun 10am-11pm
http://www.blackdogvideo.bc.ca/index.php
Rental cost
7-day (older titles) $4.00
2-day (new releases) $5.00
Photos and video by Brian McKechnie
Toronto's Top Video Stores
Part 1:
Queen Video
Part 2:
Suspect Video
Part 3:
Marquee Video