A few months ago, Intercontinental Video reopened its doors. It had been closed for more than a year, after a fire destroyed the West Bank store’s irreplaceable video collection of almost 50,000 titles. The store was always a sure bet if you were trying to up your cool factor with an attractive potential mate by finding some obscure title. Om Arora, owner and operator, had been gathering foreign films for twenty years. He is originally from India.
It might have been a good time to get out of the business, what with the rise of DVDs and DirecTV. But Arora decided to resurrect the shop, after scores of loyal customers and desperate singles encouraged him to. Starting over made it easy to convert the business; Arora now deals primarily in digital discs. This is not the first time he’s had to convert from one format to another. Shortly after he launched the first time, a new format called VHS was beginning to take a bite out of Beta.
Arora started the business as a hobby while he was finishing his Ph.D. in genetics at the U of M. When I stopped in to check out the new digs, he took the broad view. “It’s a fresh start, after twenty years. Now it is like a takeoff for me. When an airplane takes off, it is slow of speed and then it gets fast. Whether that speed will come for the store again, I do not know.”
Intercontinental’s seedy old Cedar Avenue charm has been replaced by a white-and-green sheen, spotless décor, and the tidy economy of DVD boxes on thin shelves. Still, the shop holds the same old wealth of dubious offerings. Here’s a copy of the depressive subtitled foreign flick Stroszek. There’s the kitschy cult classic Vampyros Lesbos.
Around the corner, on Riverside Avenue, is World Beat and Video. The friendly competitors are just out of view of one another. Together, the two stores encompass the largest and most diverse video collection in the state. World Beat also has plenty to crow about in the way of recent improvements. The store’s owners, Solomon Cherne and Erdoan Akgue, have enlarged the DVD stock, including Bollywood titles and the African films that appeal to the neighborhood’s burgeoning Somali population. They have also installed a café on the store’s ground level.
Solomon Cherne is originally from Ethiopia. Erdoan Akgue came from Turkey. The two met when they attended junior high together in Minneapolis. For the past twelve years, they have gotten along remarkably well, working together in the store every day. They occasionally disagree on the merits of particular inventory, however. “This guy can get excited about a movie like My Dinner With Andre!” said Akgue with disgust. “Not for me. I need movies with more action.”
Arora, Cherne, and Akgue seem to agree that there is enough business for both stores to thrive. But it’s probably not something to chalk up to the cosmopolitanism of Twin Citizens. Any owner of an eclectic, independent video store holds this maxim dear: When the going gets tough, the tough fall back on steady porn rentals.—Jeremy O’Kasick
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