Rain City Video and more Seattle stores we miss

A view of the mural painted on the side of Rain City Video in Ballard, which will be closing at the end of April after 29 years in business. A view of the mural painted on the side of Rain City Video in Ballard, which will be closing at the end of April after 29 years in business. Photo: Stephen Cohen/seattlepi.com Photo: Stephen Cohen/seattlepi.com Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Rain City Video and more Seattle stores we miss 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

At the end of April, Mark Vrieling will shut Rain City Video's doors for the last time.

A Sunset Hill institution since opening on 32nd Avenue Northwest in 1989, the West Ballard store was at one time one of three locations Vrieling opened in the late 1980s and early 90s. In addition to carrying the latest Hollywood releases, Rain City catered to a hardcore fan base who came for the deep back catalog of independent and overseas offerings, but the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Video made the store's eventual demise a foregone conclusion. Rain City passed the break-even point last summer, when Vrieling said he knew is was, "time to shut down."

Here's the plot twist: Vrieling isn't planning on getting out of the movie business just yet. As detailed on the store's website, Vrieling is partnering with a Silicon Valley engineer to move his inventory online, where he believes he can compete with the streaming titans.

"Both of them carry a lot of TV, but neither one carries more than 8,000 movies. My little store, I had 38,000 movies, so we have much, much more depth than what you're finding online," Vrieling said. "We'll cover new releases too, but what will make us different than anybody else out there is that we'll have all that foreign and independent content that you can't get on the internet."

The plan is theoretical at this point, with Vrieling setting up a Kickstarter page to help fund the building of a prototype that will move -- not copy -- a DVD's content online, which will allow him to comply with copyright laws. (Those interested can find more information about the Kickstarter campaign at the Sunset Hill store and on the website.) But he will also continue to sell off the more than 15,000 titles he won't be moving online until April 28.

After nearly three decades in business, Vrieling said he had no hard feelings about shutting down his last brick-and-mortar shop.

"I'm not bitter about the closing at all. Twenty-nine years was a really good run, and things change," he said. "This is just what happens in business; things evolve. We hope we can evolve with it, but even if I can't, it was a good run."

Visit seattlepi.com for more Seattle news. Contact reporter Stephen Cohen at stephencohen@seattlepi.com or @scohenPI.