Kate Kowalczik has fond childhood memories of hunting for the perfect weekend movie rental.
“I grew up in Kaysville, and we had this local spot, Cosmos Video,” she said. “And every Friday night I would go with my dad, and they had some special where you could get, like, five movies for a certain price. And I'd always, you know, run up and down the aisles excited to pick mine that I was going to take home for the weekend.”
Now, she’s got a little piece of that childhood feeling in her front yard.
Kowalczik is the owner of Salt Lake City’s first Little Free Blockbuster, located in The Avenues neighborhood. It’s like a Little Free Library but for movies and music, as if someone shrunk an old Blockbuster Video store down to the size of a newspaper box.
She fell in love with the idea when she came across it on social media. Kowalczik is a social worker and saw the box as a way she could give back.
“I see a lot of folks who don't have a lot of resources, don't have a lot of community, and so in my personal life, participating in things that help build that community is really important to me,” she said.
The whole project came together in about a weekend. Right now, it’s stocked with seasonal favorites like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Elf.” There are hundreds of Little Free Blockbusters nationwide, but only two in Utah. Recapturing the feeling of a Friday night video store run is only part of the appeal. It’s also a nostalgic way for Utahns to save some cash.
The monthly streaming bill for one household with premium subscriptions to Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, HBO Max and Apple TV could come close to $100. Between price hikes and password-sharing crackdowns from streaming services, some customers are reconsidering how much they’re willing to spend on entertainment subscriptions.
A report released this summer on consumer habits and streaming from the Bank of America Institute found a lot of so-called “churn.”
“In other words, it looks like, from their monthly payments, that people are cutting services, but they're also adding services,” said David Tinsley, a senior economist with the institute. “So I think there's quite a lot of competition in the market in terms of shopping around.”
He said nationwide, consumers are squeezed.
“So their wage growth, particularly at the lower income end, has slipped. Their overall spending growth has slipped. They're still under pressure from things like higher motor insurance, higher housing costs, higher child care costs. So in a way, streaming is one of the areas they can look at and take a fresh look at,” he said.
After Park City resident Reid Barnes lost her husband, she picked up several streaming services for entertainment. But over the last couple of years, she said she “just kind of slowly dropped things.”
It freed up more time for other hobbies.
“I read a lot more,” she said. “I teach cross country skiing for the city, and go out and play with my — I'm retired — so go out and play with my friends. I love to hike. Take the dogs hiking, and I sew. I just finished a t-shirt quilt for a friend who lost her mom. And I make costumes for my grandchildren, and, you know, clothes for myself.”
And Cottonwood Heights resident Jonathan Deesing said he couldn’t justify it anymore when the price of Netflix neared $20 a month. And he didn’t stop there. He whittled down other streaming services, too. He said he now shares one streaming bundle with a friend, each of them paying around $10 a month.
But the cost savings didn’t land back in his entertainment budget.
“It went to inflation. It went to the grocery store. I don't think it was really discretionary funding. It just went right back into the bills category,” he said.
Deesing also relies on his own movie collection and on the Salt Lake County Library system.
Libraries still have huge selections of DVDs and music, and even get new releases. Those options are free to borrow with a library card.
“And you can just reserve it, and they'll ship it to your library, and then you just get a text when it's ready, and it feels like old Netflix,” Deesing said. “It’s awesome.”
For Kate Kowalczik and her Little Free Blockbuster, it’s really about community. The bright blue box is definitely a conversation starter, and she’s even watched a young preschooler discover what DVDs were in this age of streaming.
“I think joy is contagious, and so it's been so fun and joyful for me to just witness, even when people don't take something from the box, to see that smile has just, it's brought a lot of joy into my life.”
