By Kelly Kolff

Chris Wade was the cool kid, the one everyone wanted at their sleepover. Night after night, Wade would show up with armfuls of the latest horror flick or Nintendo game ready to share with all of his closest friends.

No, Wade didn’t have some secret ties with movie production companies and no; he didn’t know the CEOs of the latest game developers. He simply grew up in the perfect place for a young boy in the ‘80s: his family’s video store.

While other kids spent their summers vacationing at the beach or gaming at the local arcades, Wade and his friends would rollerblade straight to the family store to watch movies and play games for hours on end.

“It’s been a lot of fun sharing these movies because I’ve seen everything in here about a hundred times,” Wade said.

Anyone with a laptop and a love of media will tell you they can download, stream, or play anything they’d like with a click of a button. But no amount of modern-day instant access compares to the vast collection of movies that seems to stretch for miles at Premiere Video on Mockingbird Lane.

Owner Sam Wade has been selling videos since 1984, when he and his then-wife, Madeline, opened up the first location at Royal Lane and Skillman Street. Yet he wasn’t always interested in watching films.

“You could say I grew into it,” Wade said. “As the years went on I would watch more and more and more and get more confidence and enjoyed what I enjoyed and didn’t watch what I didn’t.”

The store itself is covered wall to wall with every title imaginable. If you want it, Premiere Video most definitely has it. That obscure French film from 2013? It’s called “Mood Indigo” and it’s on the “Foreign” wall, along with the other 10,000 or so foreign titles. And even if they don’t have what you’re looking for, Sam Wade will get it for you.

“We listened to what the customer wanted and heard customer requests,” Wade said. “Madeline was really the one who would notice that we’d tailor the store to the direction that the customer wanted.”

The patrons of Premiere Video are what make the store possible. Wade often cites his customer base as the reason the job is so enjoyable.

“People always come in in a good mood,” Wade said. “It’s not enjoyable because of the movies only, it’s enjoyable because of the people that come in. The people that come into the store are so stupendous.”

Wade also enjoys talking to new customers about Netflix, since it gives him the chance to compare Premiere’s library to that of the online streaming service. Often, Netflix does not have titles that Premiere has.

“As soon as they throw Netflix out, of course my antenna goes up,” Wade said. “The website would say, ‘This movie is not available on DVD. We do not know when it’s going to be released.’ And I’d go, ‘But right there it is! Either they’re lying to you, or they’re lying to you.’”

Students at Southern Methodist University have noticed the lack of variety Netflix has to offer as well.

“There are certain animations that are not available on Netflix,” junior Amy Nguyen said. “They have a very limited list of anime.”

Along with its astounding collection, Premiere Video’s draw is the atmosphere and ability to bring people together.

“The store used to be a great big social gathering,” Wade said. “It’s really, really fun to argue about stuff and look at stuff and feel the box cover and read the back and see who’s in it and stuff. You just can’t do that with the online experience.”

Despite the store’s decline in popularity, Sam Wade’s son assures that Premiere Video is resilient.

“I always thought that was most triumphant part,” Chris Wade said. “We’re still around just hanging out, having fun, selling movies.”