Reckless Video

10/1/14 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor, Zig marker, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Greg and I have been renting our weekly movies from Reckless Video for most of the 25-plus years that we’ve lived in the Maple Leaf neighborhood. Back when the movies we rented came on VHS, Reckless was located on the west side of Roosevelt Way Northeast at around Northeast 90^th. At some point, a mysterious night fire turned Reckless and the other small businesses on that block into a blackened shell. But like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, Reckless reopened a year or two later on the same block of the east side of Roosevelt, where it stands today.

The movie medium we rent has gone from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray, but Reckless remains the same. We could probably save a little money by using Netflix or other entertainment services, but we couldn’t get honest opinions about films we are considering from Netflix or discuss the nuances of our favorite TV series with Amazon. We enjoy the simple ritual of walking over to Reckless to return our weekend movie on a sunny Sunday afternoon, or dashing in from the rain on a Friday night to select a movie and then afterwards picking up Chinese takeout from Snappy Dragon across the street.

Neighborhood video rental stores are almost extinct, and even big box places like Blockbuster apparently can’t compete with on-demand entertainment services. I don’t know how much longer Reckless will be in Maple Leaf, but as long as it is, we’ll keep getting our weekly movies there.

I’ve sketched Cloud City Coffee, Mug Bugs Coffee and now Reckless Video, so I have enough to call it a series: Maple Leaf neighborhood businesses.