The film rental chain once had 8,000 stores in the US, but as of this week only one – in Bend, Oregon – remains. Its owner says people will still keep coming

How the world’s last Blockbuster is keeping the DVD dream alive

Name: Blockbuster

Age: From the beforetimes. Or, 1985.

Appearance: Dwindling.

No more blockbuster movies? WTF? Don’t tell me the artsy-fartsy crowd have won and it’s all going to be The Shape of Water and Wes Anderson nonsense from now on? Mission Impossible 6: Fallout is still going ahead, isn’t it? I’ve already bought popcorn. Not ‘blockbuster’ adjective. Nor ‘blockbuster’ noun. Blockbuster, as in brand name.

Eh? Is it an app? Identifying traffic holdups, perhaps, and allowing you to plot a route around – thus “busting”! – them? Or, suggesting ways to get the creative juices flowing and “busting”! your writer’s block? Or – None of those. Blockbuster is a film rental outlet.

I don’t understand. It is a sort of shop …

I don’t understand. An edifice made of bricks and mortar from which items …

Actual things? Solid, three-dimensional, hold-in-your-hands things? Yes.

Crazy-cool, yo! Yes. As I was saying – from which items can be bought or occasionally, as in this case, rented.

But how are you going to take away a movie? A movie is just pixels and internet and air. In Blockbuster, movies took the form of DVDs and, before that, videos.

I don’t understand again. DVDs were circular shiny things like CDs, and videos were big cassette tapes.

CDs? Cassette tapes? Never mind. The news is that there is now just one Blockbuster left standing.

Wow! Where? Somewhere ancient, I guess. Wait, did they find it inside that sarcophagus they just uncovered in Egypt? Almost. It’s in Bend, Oregon. Two of the final three closed this week – both in Alaska – making it the last survivor of a chain that once boasted more than 8,000 links across America, and many more beyond. There was even one in Catford.

How did the last three survive so long? The Alaska pair were helped by the state’s problems with high-speed internet access. The Oregon owner says his store has a very loyal local following, made up of people who are tired of streaming everything through their phones and laptops and not having any personal interactions.

They must do personal interactions better over there. I don’t miss them at all. If there was just some way of managing without the nurse who comes to dress my pressure sores after bingewatching Preacher, I’d be golden. Into every heavily streamed life, a little suppurating soreness must fall.

Do say: “Blockbuster – preventing bedsores since 1985. The John Hughes collection, A Few Good Men and Heathers, please!”

Don’t say: “I forgot to rewind it!”