{"id":6229,"date":"2014-08-13T08:30:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T15:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=6229"},"modified":"2016-09-07T16:21:51","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T23:21:51","slug":"a-seattle-film-institution-wants-to-go-non-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/13\/a-seattle-film-institution-wants-to-go-non-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"a Seattle film institution wants to go non-profit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scarecrow Video has been a Seattle institution for many years. It started as a video rental store &#8211; and still is one &#8211; but it was owned by the kind of crazed film fanatics who run a business primarily as a way to build the biggest collection of things imaginable. The original owner was the sort of person who would fly on an hour&#8217;s notice to former Soviet republics on the <em>rumour<\/em> that he could get a SECAM videotape copy of a particular obscure Stalinist-era Belorussian film. And half the time, he&#8217;d return with it.<\/p>\n<p>Despite having one of the largest film collections in the world &#8211; possibly <em>the<\/em> largest in the world &#8211; video rental doesn&#8217;t cut it anymore, so they&#8217;re going non-profit. But that&#8217;s expensive, too, so <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/644154729\/the-scarecrow-project\">they&#8217;re launching a Kickstarter to make it happen<\/a>. Go help.<\/p>\n<p>I started renting from them when they were next to J&#038;S Phonograph Needles in Roosevelt &#8211; <em>yes that was a store for phonograph needles it didn&#8217;t make much sense then either<\/em> &#8211; and remember when they moved to the U. District, on 50th and Roosevelt. They bought out what used to be the biggest Radio Shack ever, a multistory building with its own screening lounge and everything.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2014-08\/scarecrow-video.jpg\"><br \/><i>This is a small fraction of their collection.<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty damn cool, and it&#8217;d be a disaster to lose such a comprehensive film collection &#8211; particularly as it is <em>actually available to the public<\/em>. Even the exotic stuff can be rented and\/or screened &#8211; they have multiformat players available, too. In some cases, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/article\/seattles-scarecrow-video-fights-survive-208076\">they have one of only three to four copies of films still in existence<\/a>, and <em>you can see it<\/em>. <em>That&#8217;s<\/em> the kind of collection this is.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve known one of the current owners for a long time; this project is a big deal for them, too. So <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/644154729\/the-scarecrow-project\">go help them flip that switch to non-profit<\/a>. As I write this, they&#8217;ve made 60% of goal in a <em>day<\/eM>, thanks in no small part to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/article\/seattles-scarecrow-video-fights-survive-208076\"><i>The Onion<\/i>&#8216;s AV Club<\/a>. Let&#8217;s see if we can&#8217;t get them there by <em>tomorrow<\/em>, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scarecrow Video has been a Seattle institution for many years. It started as a video rental store &#8211; and still is one &#8211; but it was owned by the kind of crazed film fanatics who run a business primarily as a way to build the biggest collection of things imaginable. The original owner was the [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-peoples-art","category-random-coolness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9666,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229\/revisions\/9666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}