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    Inside L.A.’s Vidiots, a Video Rental Store Where DVDs Still Have a Waiting List

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    Vidiots, a holdover from the golden age of VHS, is staging a comeback as a community hub.A companion to T’s 212 series about New York institutions, the 213 column highlights beloved landmarks in and around Los Angeles.In 1985, when Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber opened their video store, Vidiots, in a former bail bonds storefront a few blocks from Santa Monica beach, the movie rental industry was just gaining momentum. Blockbuster, the mega-chain, opened that same year in Dallas, while smaller rental franchises like Captain Video and Video Station were springing up all over California. Polinger and Tauber, childhood friends who grew up in West Los Angeles, had been working in international film distribution and business management, respectively, when they decided to change course. “We were tired of working in corporate environments that were dominated by men. We wanted to be in business for ourselves,” says Tauber when we met on a recent video call with Polinger.The two friends came across a magazine article detailing the rise of video stores across the country — by the mid-1980s, there were some 15,000 movie rental outlets in the United States — and decided to take a leap. “Neither of us had ever worked retail before. We were in our early 30s and thought we were over the hill,” says Tauber with a laugh. “This was our chance.” When banks wouldn’t give them a loan, they cobbled together money from family. They knew they wanted a neon sign for the storefront but could only afford seven letters. A brainstorming session led to the name Vidiots.Cathy Tauber (left) founded Vidiots in 1985 in Santa Monica, Calif., with Patty Polinger (right). Maggie Mackay (center) is the Vidiots Foundation executive director. Photographed at the Eagle Theatre in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 12, 2025.Carlos JaramilloPolinger and Tauber set out to distinguish their shop as an alternative video store, and one more welcoming than other niche retailers. They didn’t want customers to think that they “had to know every director,” says Polinger. “We were against that snobbery in other stores.” Initially they offered just 800 VHS cassettes for rental ($2.50 per day for members), including the Beatles documentary “Let It Be” (1970) and Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” (1946). The founders were also determined to make Vidiots — just 1,000 square feet — a community hub of sorts by hosting events. The year after it opened, customers were invited to a late-night gathering with the experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Another early event had Polinger and Tauber baking a breast-shaped cake for the director Russ Meyer, known for campy sexploitation films like “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” (1965). “Many women wore bras for tops and Russ was happy to autograph them,” recalls Tauber.Rare VHS cassettes on display at Vidiots. Many of the tapes are not available to rent because of their fragile condition, but the foundation has plans to digitize much of the collection.Carlos JaramilloThe store held puppet shows and limbo contests and threw a polka party for the documentarian Les Blank. An Elvis impersonator performed after the screening of the documentary “Mondo Elvis” (1984), and musicians from the nearby Venice Beach boardwalk would drop by to play drums on paint cans inside the store. “The vibe at night, especially on the weekends, was a party,” says Tauber.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      6 Hidden Shops in New York Worth Visiting

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      You didn’t come to New York to wander fluorescent aisles hunting for someone to unlock the fitting room. You came for the locked-door city — where nothing’s labeled, the elevator grumbles and whoever buzzes you in has already decided how the afternoon should go.You might leave with a sterling silver carabiner, a fossilized dinosaur foot or a record that makes everything else on your shelf sound flat. Or maybe it was just a book you didn’t know you were missing until it looked back at you.But don’t bother dropping by. These places don’t do foot traffic. You email. You call a landline. You wait. Maybe you DM. There’s no signage, no small talk, no piped-in jazz. What there is: hand-forged armor, prehistoric bones with six-figure price tags, music that’s never been digitized, a jewelry showroom with the logic of a toolbox, and — if you’re buzzed in — a private library (with all the books for sale) that reads like someone’s inner filing system.This isn’t retail. It’s an invitation-only obsession. And if you knock with purpose, that helps.889 Broadway, Union Square, ManhattanGlobus WashitsuA kimono-styling class at Globus Washitsu, near Union Square.Up a nondescript elevator near Union Square, through a quiet hallway and a final sliding door, is something few New Yorkers expect to find above Broadway: a Kyoto-style tatami room meticulously built by the investor and longtime Japanophile Stephen Globus. Think shoji screens, hinoki beams, seasonal scrolls — nothing here is an approximation. It’s the real deal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Why Luxury Brands and Performers Like Beyoncé Are Seeking Willo Perron’s Designs

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      Perhaps you’ve seen Beyoncé soaring over crowds in a floating horseshoe at her Cowboy Carter tour performances, or riding a metallic mechanical bull. If you’ve wondered who came up with those stunts, the answer involves Willo Perron.“She really is, in my eyes, the last of a type of an entertainer-performer,” Mr. Perron, the tour’s stage designer, said over tea at Corner Bar, a restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in April. “Really, I’ve never seen somebody work so diligently.”He was speaking with the perspective of someone who has also worked with Rihanna (on her Super Bowl LVII halftime show), with Drake (on the Aubrey and the Three Migos tour) and with Florence and the Machine (on the group’s High As Hope tour).“It makes you have to kind of show up at such a high level all the time,” Mr. Perron said of working with Beyoncé. “And it’s good, it’s like playing a sport with somebody who is much better than you. Hopefully, it makes you a little bit better yourself.”Mr. Perron, 51, is one of those people who is hard to put a label on professionally — the type of creative mind whose fluency in various mediums has led some to call him a cultural polymath and others a world builder.“What I do is like planting seeds with no expectations,” he said. “Just constantly planting seeds and planting seeds. And then if something grows, then I give it attention. And then simultaneously, this thing will grow over here and I’ll give that a little bit of attention.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      A Meghan Markle-Approved Doll That Gives Toddlers a Taste for Finer Things

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      Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is a fan.“With Love, Meghan,” the Netflix series starring and produced by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, immerses viewers in her world of at-home luxury. But for the most part, it diligently avoids mentions of specific brands.Certain episodes offer glimpses of brand-name items in Meghan’s universe. In one, while describing the outfit she is wearing, Meghan names three labels (Loro Piana, Zara, Jenni Kayne) to telegraph a preference for mixing high and low. In a later episode, she identifies another product — a doll belonging to Lilibet, her 3-year-old daughter — that, by Meghan’s description, comes across as squarely luxurious.It has “a little baguette and a little cheese,” Meghan says, “and the name of the doll is Stella Al Fresco.” (Its full name, in fact, is Wee Baby Stella peach Al Fresco.)These plush dolls, which are marketed for toddlers, are from a line called Love, Stella. They have a Cabbage Patch quality thanks to features like round faces and chubby arms. Stella dolls are very popular among customers of the Acorn Store, a toy store in Santa Monica, Calif., which is about 80 miles down the coast from where Meghan and Prince Harry live in Montecito.As are other toys involving breads and cheeses.“Baguette toys have been trending like crazy,” said Heather Hamilton, 53, who owns the store. “It’s rampant across Southern California: the baguette, the charcuterie, the cheese boards. Kids really like imitating life, and if this is what they’re seeing on their parents’ patio, then they just pretend play.”Stella dolls, which start at around $20, take various forms: Some look like toddlers, others look like newborns and all come with pacifiers that magnetically attach to their mouths. The line also includes a variety of clothing and accessory sets, like an extravagant picnic collection that costs $35 and comes with a checkered blanket and snacks including a plush sandwich and watermelon wedge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Peggy Caserta, Who Wrote a Tell-All About Janis Joplin, Dies at 84

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      Her Haight-Ashbury clothing store was ground zero for the counterculture. But she was best known for a tawdry book — which she later disavowed — published after Ms. Joplin’s death.Peggy Caserta, whose funky Haight-Ashbury clothing boutique was a magnet for young bohemians and musicians, and who exploited her relationship with Janis Joplin in a much-panned 1973 memoir that she later disavowed, died on Nov. 21 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 84.Her partner and only immediate survivor, Jackie Mendelson, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.The Louisiana-born Ms. Caserta was 23 and working at a Delta Air Lines office in San Francisco when she decided to open a clothing store for her cohort, the lesbians in her neighborhood. She found an empty storefront on Haight Street, near the corner of Ashbury, which she rented for $87.50 a month.At first Ms. Caserta sold jeans, sweatshirts and double-breasted denim blazers that her mother made. Then she added Levi’s pants, which a friend turned into flares by inserting a triangle of denim into the side seams. When the friend couldn’t keep up with the orders, Ms. Caserta persuaded Levi Strauss & Company to make them.She named the place Mnasidika (pronounced na-SID-ek-ah), after a character in a poem by Sappho. “It’s a Greek girls’ name,” Ms. Caserta told The San Francisco Examiner in 1965, for an article about the “new bohemians” colonizing the Haight-Ashbury district.Ms. Caserta was 23 when she opened a clothing store, Mnasidika, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.via Wyatt MackenzieWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Kacey Musgraves’s Nashville

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      “I always knew that Nashville would be a destination of some sort for me, that I would land there in terms of music,” said the singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves during a Zoom call. A native Texan who is nominated for five Grammys this year, including best country album for “Deeper Well,” her fifth studio album, she began singing at a young age and at 18 competed on season five of the country music television show “Nashville Star.” A year later she moved to Nashville and never looked back. “I do owe so much to the community there for absolutely shaping me and my songs, and for giving me the opportunities that I’ve had,” she said.Her love for the city runs deep. “Nashville is home to an unparalleled songwriting community. Some of the best songwriters in the world are based there,” she said. Indeed, the city pulses with the energy of its musical heritage, and you can soak it all up everywhere you go — from its groovy lounges to its record stores and hole-in-the-wall bars.So where should a visit to Music City begin? “Even if you’re not necessarily a fan of country music, the Country Music Hall of Fame is really interesting,” she said. “Country music is a very historic genre, and this museum really honors the roots of that.”One of her favorite haunts in the East Nashville area is Grimey’s, a record store set inside an old church, complete with vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows. Right next door is Anaconda Vintage, a used clothing store where she “can always find a little treasure or two.” Across town near Vanderbilt University is Brown’s Diner, the oldest burger joint in the city and “notoriously John Prine’s favorite spot to get a hamburger.”Ms. Musgraves is currently on tour across North America in support of “Deeper Well,” which was reviewed in The Times as “a study in quiet thoughtfulness rooted in gratitude.” Her last stop, on Dec. 7, is back home in Nashville at Bridgestone Arena.Here are her favorite places to visit in the city.1. Sperry’sRoast of prime rib beef with creamy horseradish sauce, asparagus and a twice baked potato is one of the classic dishes at Sperry’s.William DeShazer for The New York TimesWith its classic decor, Sperry’s is the kind of restaurant that seems frozen in time.William DeShazer for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Balmain’s New ‘Lion King’ Collection Marks 30th Anniversary of Disney Movie

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      A new Balmain collection pays homage to the Disney film on a milestone anniversary. Plus, a preppy designer makes a comeback.For Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, the Parisian luxury house, South Africa is a long way from home. But the country is close to his heart.“My passport is French,” said Mr. Rousteing, 38, on a phone call from Paris. “But my blood is African,” added the designer, who learned relatively late in life that he is of Somalian and Ethiopian descent.The coastal Western Cape region of South Africa provided inspiration for Mr. Rousteing’s latest style collaboration: a Balmain collection developed in partnership with Disney to promote the 30th anniversary of the “The Lion King,” which was released in June 1994.The project was a kind of spiritual homecoming for the designer, as well as the realization of a childhood fantasy. Mr. Rousteing was 9 when he first saw the film. It taught him some valuable lessons. “Take nothing for granted,” he said. “Through your journey there will be obstacles and challenges, but trust in yourself, never give up.”His limited-edition collection, influenced by artisanal African textiles, patterns and silhouettes, was conceived to reflect the movie’s characters and pervading themes. Its ready-to-wear and couture pieces — which include zebra-stripe coats and jackets, a densely fringed raffia dress and a bustier gown patterned with familiar “Lion King” characters — are showcased in a short film shot near Cape Town and featuring models from across Africa.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Taylor Swift Sells a Rainbow of Vinyl Albums. Fans Keep Buying Them.

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      Artists across pop genres are finding success with colored vinyl and different variants of their releases. For Swifties, the urge to collect them all is strong.When Taylor Swift released nine vinyl editions of her album “Folklore” in 2020, Tylor Hammers, a fan in Florida, took notice. But it wasn’t until “Midnights” two years later that he became a true collector, scouring the internet and retail shops for every variation of her albums he could find — spending about $1,000 in the process — and cataloging the technicolor expanse of Swift’s LP output in an online discography.“I get enjoyment out of being a completionist,” Hammers, 24, said in a recent interview.He’s not the only one.Although streaming remains the dominant music format, physical media has been a growing niche where the industry can cater to so-called superfans, who express their dedication to artists by shelling out big bucks for collectible versions of new releases, sometimes in multiple quantities. K-pop acts like BTS pioneered this strategy by putting out an array of elaborate CD packages, often featuring goodies like postcards and photo booklets, which helped the boy band repeatedly go to No. 1.But nobody does it quite like Swift, or at least at the same scale. Last year she sold 3.5 million LPs in the United States, thanks in part to five pastel-hued variants of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of her 2014 album, and the popularity of Swift’s entire catalog during her record-breaking Eras Tour.When Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” comes out on Friday, it will be available in a portfolio of different versions — on vinyl, CD and even cassette — with bonus tracks and, on certain “deluxe” editions sold through Swift’s website, trinkets like magnets, photo cards and engraved bookmarks. Some items, like a standard CD, go for as little as $13. But last weekend, Swift’s site offered a limited run of autographed LPs for $50, which, according to fans on social media, vanished in 20 minutes.“The Tortured Poets Department” comes out on Friday in a number of different versions and formats including CD, left, and cassette. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Is TikTok Over?

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      The app once offered seemingly endless chances to be charmed by music, dances, personalities and products. But in only a few short years, its promise of kismet is evaporating.How much time do I spend on TikTok? I can tell you which chiropractor is demonstrating their technique without even seeing their face. I know which fashion content creator is partial to Rei Kawakubo, and who has a preposterous Carol Christian Poell collection. I know which New York City microinfluencers go on vacation together, and which creators are building a modest following joking about the music of a small scene of rappers who make Playboi Carti sound like Kendrick Lamar.Through endless hours of scrolling — an hour a day, at least, for several years now — I’ve been accumulating hyperniche expertise predicated on my interests, conscious and subconscious. The result has been a gathering of online characters that, at this point, shape my cultural consumption far more than any celebrity or news source.This is what TikTok intends to do, tapping into pure id, drilling down on what you know and what you might want to know in hopes that you never leave the app’s forever scroll. Of all the social media platforms, it holds the greatest promise of kismet. It’s the one that has seemed most in tune with individual taste and most capable of shaping emerging monoculture.But increasingly in recent months, scrolling the feed has come to resemble fumbling in the junk drawer: navigating a collection of abandoned desires, who-put-that-here fluff and things that take up awkward space in a way that blocks access to what you’re actually looking for.This has happened before, of course — the moment when Twitter turned from good-faith salon to sinister outrage derby, or when Instagram, and its army of influencers, learned to homogenize joy and beauty. (Some apps, like the TikTok precursor Vine, were shuttered before ever becoming truly tiresome.) Similarly, the malaise that has begun to suffuse TikTok feels systemic, market-driven and also potentially existential, suggesting the end of a flourishing era and the precipice of a wasteland period.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More