Coincidentally, My 20s and the last days of my bachelorhood coincided perfectly with the pinnacle of the porn rental business. I only dated sporadically throughout the 90s, and happened to live alone at the time, so I spent more than the usual amount of time masturbating. Fortunately there were two VHS rental places very close to where I lived.

The first was a rather shabby establishment run by a Vietnamese entrepreneur named "Bob", who had a fairly modest selection of mainstream movies in the front part of his store... but a much larger selection of adult titles behind a beaded curtain. It wasn't a very clean store, and he used to stack his boxes cover-to-cover like books... so I had to pull each one out to see what was what. But he made up for that with the sheer volume of titles he carried. The other I frequented was an actual adult store. It was very clean and very well lit and, even though it lacked the variety of Bob's store, the boxes were all displayed with the covers out, and were all organized into specific categories like "gangbang", "oral", "anal", etc. I liked the way that store smelled. I seem to remember being very interested in anything by Max, Elegant Angel, or Anabolic at the time. And Kaitlyn Ashley and Nikki Brantz were favorites.

On my days off I'd usually get there early in the afternoon and rent 3 - 4 titles. Sometimes more if I had a long weekend. When I got them home, I'd lay on the floor directly in front of the television, so I could swap tapes in and out of the vcr without having to get up each time. I'd usually stroke myself continuously as I FF'd through each tape to find favorite scenes. Occasionally I'd pop during the first or second tape, if I came across a particularly hot scene. But I always tried to make it through each tape... and then perhaps revisit a previous scene if I hadn't yet climaxed. This resulted in stroke sessions that were sometimes 3 hours or more, and remarkably powerful streams of ejaculate upon orgasm.

loved it. i feel the same way about porn as i do 80's hardcore music and tattoos: we were a small fraternity of scumbags who were all into something. It was OURS. Now any noob can just go on a tube site and think they're down.

I miss the old Zenith cable boxes. Somehow we figured out if you slid a key into one of the vent holes at the back of the box in just the right spot, it would short out the security scrambling system and you'd get all the pay-per-view channels for free. 10:30pm - 2:30am was all porno.

I miss the C-band TV satellite porn stations of the mid 90s. Canadian Xtacy, etc. You could buy 24/7 porn on a yearly basis. They also had live interactive call-in shows with top porn stars. Now, they only offer daily pay-per-view viewing.

Netflix needs to get into streaming porn. Netflixxx?

Being from a small town where everybody knew everybody, it sucked. The local video store(only one left in town when I was of legal age) had a door where the hinges were so dry, they creaked loudly when the door to the adult room was open. Everyone's eyes immediately turned to see who the perv coming out of the porno room was. Oh, and one time the loudmouthed woman behind the counter stated, "I'm glad you told me you already graduated the other day, or I'd ask for your I.D. for these movies" with a line of other people waiting to check out behind me.

When I was about 10, I went to get a movie from another store that was around at the time. I asked if I could use the restroom, and the guy told me wait a minute. He then proceeded to go into the adult room and grabbed a rope connected to a huge sheet of drywall used to block the boxes of the porn because the bathroom was behind that room. I went in and noticed a bunch of the porn boxes were on the floor next to the bathtub(the store used to be somebody's house). Didn't realize until years later why somebody would do that.

This...and actual news feeds hours before they showed. NASA feeds too.

Around this same time period, "Bob" hired some miscreant who looked and sounded like an overweight Sam L Jackson. One night he came into the bar where I was working, and when he recognized me, pointed at me and said (very loudly) to his friend, "That's the guy that likes Nina Hartley!"

He wasn't lying though. I was beating off a lot to Nina in those days.

Do yo miss pagers too...

Progress or get trampled over...

The mom and pop video store in my town used to cut the fronts and backs off the boxes and put them in plastic sleeves inside binders because they lacked the space for a whole separate room and kept the binders in a closet with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. One person at a time could look through the porn selection. The place was run by a husband and wife team. They each worked a separate but overlapping shift. Almost no one would rent porn during the wife's shift because she would make comments on your selections and gossip about what kind of porn you liked. So everyday guys would go to the video store on their lunch breaks or try to make the half hour window after work to rent/drop off porn while the husband was working alone. It took the husband two years to realize why they didn't make much money off their porn tapes. The men in town would rather drive to philly and buy used porn tapes rather than deal with the judgemental video store bitch. I went in the porn closet once when the husband was working and when I came out the wife was on counter duty. I was newly 18 years old. I desperately wanted some hardcore porn. I was renting on a Saturday because the video store was closed sundays but only charged one day rental so I'd have the porn for 2 days for my use. Soon as I stepped out of the closet she made a comment. I figured fuck it she is already judging me so I took my selections up to the counter. It got worse. She lectured me the whole time she was looking for the tapes and ringing me up. It made it worse was she was smoking hot. She had a pretty middle aged face and the body of a 25 year old that she liked to show off.

Pagers were great. They did one thing, and they did it well. Slapping a touch screen on a device isn't always a big leap forward.

Rentals were fun. I miss porn magazines too.

I really miss porn magazines. The slick, heavy paper, etc.
I wonder what happened to Puritan Magazine. That was a fave.

I never bought a Puritan magazine, but I think the first time I ever jacked it to Gauge was a Puritan video.

I miss finding porn in the woods.