Friday night is DVD night for me and the lady. I guess we should be out raving at the local chav pit but I’m far too old and the lady A is far too polite to mention the fact. Besides, there’s nothing better than a Friday evening in with a bottle or two of vino and a couple of randomly selected movies from the local DVD shop.
Months ago we accidentally and fortunately stumbled upon the Piracki Video shop on Ul. Lea. It’s about 10 minutes walk from where I live, has a pretty good selection of movies, and foreigners are treated as fellow human beings (even if they can’t say “I’m returning this” in Polish). There’s none of this tedious messing about with laminated membership cards and whatnot; they take a note of your name and address (on trust) and that’s it. It’s like being in the Cosa Nostra. No questions asked. You come in, choose a dvd, give a nod and a wave to the lass behind the desk, and that’s it. Admittedly, if you bring a DVD back late, they send ‘Big Stefan’ round to break your legs, but it’s a small price to pay for the day-to-day level of service.
We were very happy there for six months or so. Then, one fateful day, we wandered down a different street and were hypnotized by the pull of a Mega-Hit Nowy-DVD shop called Beverly Hills Video!! Can you imagine getting away with a name like ‘Beverly Hills Video” in the UK? Conjures images of three Armenian cousins renting slightly-worn Chinese-copied DVDs on Kentish Town Road to me. In Poland it’s the acme of cool and trendy weekend entertainment. There are dozens of them across the country, kind of similar to what Blockbuster used to be in the UK. The place is nicely laid out, professionally decorated, well-stocked and, in the final analysis, absolutely awful. We joined.
For three or four weeks we went there every Friday and wandered around its isles and isles of cruddy movies. We tried hard to believe that we were having a good time trawling through the acres and acres of meaningless titles involving ninjas, commandos, strike force 9s, and phat chicks but, in the end, we had to come to terms with the fact that they they didn’t actually have any Woody Allen movies at all. Not to mention the fact that we just didn’t like the place, on any level, despite it’s cooler-full of blue energy drinks and the opportunity to buy ‘chilled wine.’
This week the full horror of our error finally broke upon us and we resolved to return to Piracki Video to face the music. I won’t say we weren’t afraid, because we were. Would they accept us back into the fold? Could we fool them by casually mentioning an imaginary month-long holiday to the Caribbean despite our pasty Polish-winter complexions? Would they smell the evil scent of Beverly Hills Video on our clothes and cast us forever into the outer darkness? These and other questions troubled us and quelled conversation as we made our way up ul. Lea last Friday evening.
At precisely 18:17 we swept into the place with breath held and barely daring to glance in the direction of the rental desk…
The lass behind the desk rose… and broke into a massive grin. She spread her arms and more-or-less embraced us with a kiss on each cheek. Waves of relief and nostalgia swept over us. We spent an hour wandering around the 50 square meter shop grinning like fools and reveling in the sensation of familiarity. “I feel like I came home” said the lady A and I, for one, knew exactly what she meant.
Beverly Hills Video could be a knock off of the other American video store chain – Hollywood video.
though in America stores are fighting to stay open with all the other movie rental options out there… ie Netflicks, DVR, and downloads.
No, no, you mixed them up.
Piracki Video reads like something like the smooth and cosy Chocolat-movie milieu, only Krakow’s a bit bigger than Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, and they don’t work in choc. Beverly Hills Video, on the other hand, look like the Mafia, just gone legal. “Who do you want? Woody Allen? Non I mai heard of. Him Italiano? No? We got respettable spaghetti westerns e decent famiglia comedias e phat ninja mammamias, not any foreign stronzata decadenta, capisce?”
darth with his posh languages! again;)
Dear All,
Where and when do you find the time and strength to look for some DVD places? Not to mention the fact that you have to watch the films later.
I can barely find enough stamina to spend an hour or so just looking out of my window and hating the brave firemen who, over and over again, come to my nook of Krakow to fell down another several perfectly healthy trees (because some branches might break in twenty years time and kill the innocent babies who will happen to walk /crawl past the trees then). Perhaps I should envy all of you that you have preserved your sanity and not worked yourself into a stupor…
Good luck with the videos!
It is “Piracik” Jamie, not “Piracki”
)
Mocha: I’m just waiting for the DVD-by-post revolution to take off here. I’m not convinced that the postal system is up to the job though. Postal workers might find the packages a little to tempting
ps. don’t tell anyone I said that
Darth: Clearly there is a market for mafia-run DVD shops of this kind. You go in thinking you want one thing and come out half an hour later having been ‘persuaded’ otherwise
Jolanta: We don’t have time. We just flagrantly do it even though we should be doing something else.
I’ve noticed that fireman in Krakow seem to double as tree surgeons, also icicle-removers in the winter.
A: Doh!
Short question:
Have you asked your Polish friends about what they feel about Kosovo already?
I wonder whether we are the only country so obsessed with a distant small patch of land, which should be of as importance as last-year’s snow. Or maybe it’s just amongst my friends. But it would be interesting to know whether the foreigner also noticed this phenomena.
szopen: I’ve certainly noticed demonstrations in the square and ‘free kosovo’ graffiti around and thought it was odd, bit nobody I know has any particular interest in it no; why is it such a big issue?