The last video rental store in Kelowna is up for sale.
Owner Leo Bartels says his life is changing, getting busier, and that he soon won’t have the time to properly run the business, Leo’s Videos.
“I’ve been humming and hawing about what I want for my future for a few years now,” Bartels told Global News on Tuesday.
“I have a kid on the way and I’ve been wanting to go back to school and probably go for being a high school teacher,” continued Bartels, who opened the store in 2004. “That’s where my mind is at right now.
“Can I swing running a business while going to school and having a kid? And I feel it wouldn’t be good for the store. It needs somebody to focus on it, it needs somebody to really have the time and the effort and the energy to really take it in and continue doing something wonderful with it.”
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Bartels said the store has approximately 3,800 active users.
“Streaming services have their place, and, for me, I feel they’re more of a replacement for cable television, daytime television,” said Bartels.
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He said streaming services don’t carry a large selection of movies, noting there’s a large number of movies that come out each month that don’t hit streaming services.
Bartels added his store has 25,000 titles, and estimated Netflix has around 5,500 titles.
“If you’re really looking for specific things, video stores are still the place to go,” he said.
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Bartels not only talked with Global Okanagan about his decision to sell the business; he also talked about other things, such as:
Favourite movie:
“My favourite movie of all time is A Time to Kill, with Samuel L. Jackson, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey. A movie from the late 1990s . . . so good.”
Most under-rated film:
“I’m going to go with Treed Murray. It’s actually a Canadian film that basically nobody knows. It’s one of the best pieces of dialogue I’ve ever seen.”
Favourite actor and why:
“I don’t have a favourite actor. I believe that every actor comes and goes, they all do bits and pieces that are great for a while, they do good movies, they do bad movies.
“What I love is seeing someone that I’ve never seen before come out and conquer a role like a champ.”
Favourite character in a film:
“My favourite character is from a movie called Man From Earth, which is an exploration of what it would be like if a person happened to have been around for the last 140,000 years and never died.”
For more about Leo’s Videos, click here.
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