It's Friday morning, and a stretch of sunny weather coupled with the Vancouver Canucks Stanley Cup playoff run are conspiring against Black Dog Video owner Darren Gay as he prepares to open the doors to the DVD rental store he's operated for the past 15 years.

Raised in Oshawa, Ont., Gay lighted out for the west in 1995 after a spiritually unsatisfying stint painting Lord of the Rings figurines in Guelph, and soon set up shop on Cambie Street, across the road from the store's current digs. What started out as a modest enterprise with 500 VHS tapes and a love of weird horror films has become a neighbourhood fixture, stocking 10,000 DVDs, from new releases and independent fare to documentaries and cult classics, including a copy of an extremely rare, extremely bad, made-for-television broadcast of The Star Wars Holiday Special.

As the stereo plays a random selection of rocking tunes by flannel-shirt-friendly bar band The Hold Steady and the plaintive warbles of Scottish sensitive types Belle and Sebastian, Gay's first order of business is to haul in the foam-padded cart sitting below the store's return slot like a trawler fisherman checking his nets. The overnight and early morning catch is a modest 24 DVDs. Three years ago, it would have been common to find 50 discs waiting for him, and chances are it would have been one of Gay's six employees manning the good ship Black Dog.

But it's not just sun and hockey worshippers contributing to Black Dog's woes. In the last six months, Gay has witnessed the swift and widespread demise of video stores across the city--sinking under the weight of unmanageable leases, a proliferation of entertainment choices, new technologies and a colossal shift in the way people watch movies at home. Simply put, online downloads and streaming--illegally and legally--are no longer the sole domain of socially inept computer geeks but increasingly the norm. In fact, it was recently reported that American-based Netflix, which allows subscribers to stream movies online for a flat rate of $8 a month and has attracted 800,000 Canadian subscribers since launching here in September, accounts for nearly 30 per cent of bandwidth usage in North America--more web traffic than any other source. "There's just so many mediums vying for your screen time," Gay says. "There's so much stuff on the computer to do, there's television, video on demand, there's hockey... I totally have mixed feelings about that one. I'm so into [the Canucks], and at the same time I want them to get beat out."

Gay, whose store has survived a 2004 fire and the disruptive construction of the Canada Line, which tore up much of Cambie Street, estimates business at his flagship store has dropped 30 per cent in three years. His Commercial Drive location, which he opened in 2005, has fared better, due in part to the recent closure of Alpha Video a few blocks away. "It's insane," Gay says of the recent store closures. "And all this happened this year."

Last month, Kitsilano's long-serving movie rental emporium Videomatica announced it would be closing its doors this summer after nearly 30 years--this coming on the heels of Applause Video's impending closure on Commercial Drive, the closure of Alpha Video also on Commercial and Only DVD on East Broadway near Fraser, and the sudden loss of Happy Bats Cinema on Main Street.

On March 25, the owners of Happy Bats posted the following message on its website: "So, we really are closed. And that's it. There is a long and winding story about how we arrived at this point, but the shortest version is we thought [we] were positively working with our landlord to leave our lease and find a smaller more affordable location, only to have the carpet pulled out from under us... As Don Vito Corleone said to his youngest in The Godfather, 'There wasn't enough time, Michael. There just wasn't enough time.'"

To add an exclamation point to the situation, Gay learned just before our interview that Independent Flixx on Denman was closing shop the following day. But it's not just independent video stores that are suffering. And it's not just Vancouver.

After it was reported that Blockbuster Canada had been pushed into receivership last month, news came that 146 outlets across the country would be closing by the end of June, including four Vancouver locations. As well, a number of Rogers Video stores across the country have been getting out of the movie rental business to focus on gaming and wireless technologies, or closing altogether. Last year, video store chains Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery filed for bankruptcy and closed all their stores in the U.S. and Canada.

What people don't realize, says Gay, is that when all is said and done, the majority of video stores in Vancouver will have closed in a span of six months by the end of this summer, leaving a handful of shops with equally uncertain futures to service the city. "I don't think people realize what all the implications will be of all these stores closing," Gay says. "They're not going to have access to half the stuff that we have... You come in here, you browse, you look at the boxes, you see films organized in the same genre or the same director, by the same country, and you might say, 'Oh, I'll think I'll check this out.' But on the Internet, how do you find any of that?"

And on a personal level, it's just plain tough. "Is there something more stressful than stressful? It keeps me up at night. I probably look older than I should," says the 45-year-old father. "This is what I planned to do until I retired. Now, I might have to rethink that."

For German Camacho, retirement couldn't have come at a better time. The 64-year-old former furniture upholsterer with a professional wrestler-sounding name turns 65 on July 7. The following day, he'll put his entire stock of movies on sale as he prepares to close his beloved Applause Video when his lease runs out at the end of July.

Occupying a narrow space on a less-than-bucolic stretch of Commercial Drive south of Broadway, surrounded by low-grade pharmacies, dollar stores, fast food joints and cash-chequing services, Applause has catered to film aficionados, cuddly couples, housebound stoners and unconventional families for the past 24 years. When he first opened, Beta was fighting a losing battle with VHS, no one had heard of DVDs and Applause and Videomatica were the only places in town where you could rent everything from foreign films and art house flicks to Weekend at Bernie's.

But two years ago, Camacho had a strong sense of where business was headed, and with retirement around the corner he was ready to hit eject. "Knowing the situation I'm going through, it would have been ludicrous to sign another lease--it's asking for trouble," Camacho says, noting that business has dropped 50 to 60 per cent over the last three years. He's also gone from eight employees to one, and has had to reduce store hours considerably.

"The industry is done. It's not like a restaurant where one closes and another opens or changes menus. This business is done because technology has taken over. Technology will never take over restaurants, but it's sure done a number on the video business, on the music business and it's also doing a lot of damage on the book business."

A glance at the titles under the staff picks section at Applause reads like a running commentary on his store's fortune, not to mention that of the entire industry: L'Age D'Or (The Golden Age), Salesman, Hoop Dreams, Let the Right One In, Breathless, I'm Not There. "People are always coming in saying they can't believe I'm closing," says Camacho, who's been telling customers of his plans for several months now. "But they were the ones who deserted me and ran off to the Internet."

Not that he's bitter. Although spending nearly a quarter of a century running a small business has had its share of horror stories, Camacho says he's looking forward to retirement. "I'm not saying I'm ready for the grave, but I put a lot of years of my life into this business and I think I deserve some time off... I've done really well, so I'm not leaving with tears in my eyes."

For Paul Armstrong, a film, television and theatre producer and co-founder of The Celluloid Social Club (a monthly screening series of independent short films now in its 13th year), the collapse of Vancouver's video store fleet is troubling.

"I am very surprised about the demise of so many local video stores," Armstrong said via email while in France attending the Cannes Film Festival. "That said, I heard rumours that some were in trouble but was in denial that they would actually close as they have become such a necessary fixture in Vancouver's film culture. It seems to be a trend, along with several single-screen theatres that are closing this summer, as we move into the purely online era."

Armstrong describes stores like Videomatica as his "film school," allowing him to gain a broad overview of classic films that he says is essential when working in film. He also worries that with so many video stores closing, there'll be a collective narrowing of film knowledge and fewer interesting films getting made.

"I am currently co-directing and co-producing a documentary, and researching the subject with films at various local video stores was essential. I'm not sure how I could have done it without these stores."

And for independent films, particularly Canadian ones, video stores are often the only way these movies will reach an audience, Armstrong says.

"With so many video stores closing, Vancouver will continue to be a less interesting place to live, paralleling heritage buildings being torn down for condos. The only glimmer of hope is if every film, including the classics and more obscure ones, are available online. I think they will be in the long run, but until that fully happens we are stuck in a transition zone similar to the pre-VHS era where it was difficult to access films. History seems to be repeating itself."

Currently, however, consumers are left with an ever-dwindling number of video stores, replaced by an online selection of films that's spotty at best. In fact, some industry watchers say the future of Netflix isn't even certain, pointing to the rising cost of streaming services and licensing. In Canada, the number of films and TV programs on Netflix is a fraction of that offered to its American customers. U.S. Networks such as HBO have refused to license their programs to Netflix, opting to stream content via their own online services and apps or license programs to pay-TV services.

Movie studios, such as Warner Bros., have been reluctant to license recent releases to Netflix under its current pay structure. And with growing competition from the likes of Amazon, iTunes, Google, which owns YouTube, and even Facebook, some believe Netflix will have no choice but to raise its $8 a month membership fee in order to obtain new content.

All of which could bode well for the remaining few brick-and-mortar video stores in Vancouver as they try to stay afloat amidst a sea change in technology reminiscent of the arrival of video decades ago.

"It remains to be seen," says Black Dog's embattled owner. "My goal is to get through the summer and hopefully get into the fall. And if we can do that and the sales go up in the fall, then we can stick around for a little longer."

And with that, he turns the lock on the door, opens his store and waits to see what the rest of the day will bring.

mkissinger@vancourier.com