“The demise of the independent bookstore has been augured for nearly a generation now, the inevitable casualty of behemoths like Borders and Barnes & Noble, online booksellers like Amazon, and ultimately, so we’re told, of the universal, digital library imagined by Google and various techno-visionaries. The more imminent demise of the video store, meanwhile, has merited only occasional notice, mostly in the business pages. Yet something important is being lost here, something that isn’t going to be replaced by rent-by-mail outfits like Netflix, video-on-demand services, or newfangled delivery systems like the Disney-backed MovieBeam.”