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  • 01/04/2025
Visitors from across the UK and even the US are travelling to Alfreton, Derbyshire, to experience the nostalgia of a 1980s video shop.

Rob Lane, 50, and Chris Annable, 48, run ‘The Straight To Video – 80s Video Shop,’ a museum featuring nearly 1,000 original VHS tapes, vintage movie posters, and retro arcade machines.

Open only on weekends, the shop has gained popularity due to the lasting impact of 80s pop culture and shows like Stranger Things.

While visitors cannot rent tapes, they can relive the experience of browsing them.

Many of the tapes were donated by the public.

Category

😹
Fun
Transcript
00:00I'm Rob Lane and with my good friend Chris Annable we both run straight to video the
00:1480s video shop in Ulfreton. Growing up in the 80s both me and Chris we wanted to
00:23recreate that whole vibe and feeling you got when you went to the video shop in
00:28on like Friday nights and Saturday nights pick out a film you never knew
00:32what you're going to get just scouring the shelves who knew what you're going
00:35to come back with so wanted to recreate that feeling for people which I think is
00:39what we managed to do. Well not only is it a trip back in time for people to the
00:44childhoods or the teenage years so they can browse the shelves pick out films
00:48take photos with the films and we've also got an 80s bedroom which recreates
00:54the old-school 80s bedroom with the bed covers and old posters and things like
01:00that we've also got a cinema room which people can hire out for birthday parties
01:04to show film which they've perhaps never seen on the big screen hang out and have
01:08some fun and yeah just a whole step back in time really. The videos on the shelves
01:12are just to bring back memories for people but we have a whole merchandise
01:17section we have a selection of tapes that are for sale loads of t-shirts and
01:21loads of cool stuff which you perhaps wouldn't get anywhere else. Everybody has
01:24the same story they remember times of going to the video shop with a mum or
01:28dad on a Friday night and I never get tired of hearing those stories it's a
01:32lot of fun so yeah as long as people get that feeling it's mission accomplished
01:36as far as I'm concerned. We like to try and do cool stuff for the area as well
01:41not just for fans of nostalgia but for the Alforton area so we're bringing in
01:45special guests people from Star Wars we've had Mike Quinn who played Nynum
01:50in Return of the Jedi and loads of Jim Henson things and in the coming months
01:54we've got Cobra an OG gladiator from the 1990s series he's coming to visitors and
01:59we've got Hollywood actor Charlie Slater coming in May. Charlie was in The
02:04Delinquents with Kylie Minogue and he was the voice of E.T. in the recent
02:07Holiday Reunion commercial so he's done some really cool stuff so yeah just
02:11trying to bring different things to the area and just have a lot of fun. We're on
02:15all social media just simply search at 80s video shop or 80svideoshop.co.uk
02:20and we're pretty easy to track down there's not many of us out there.

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