NORTHAMPTON — The location of the former Haymarket Cafe at 185 Main St. may soon be lined with shelves of carefully curated film collections, as neighboring Vision Video plans to expand next door sometime early next year.
Since first opening its doors in June, Visions Video has grown from a curious novelty as an old-school video rental store run as a nonprofit to having amassed a collection of over 30,000 films, many of which are unavailable on popular streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
“What we’re trying to do is to be a space that celebrates and encourages people to talk about movies,” said George Meyer, one of the co-founders of Visions Video. “Being a volunteer run nonprofit, it’s like it is just sort of born of and designed to sort of propagate love of this stuff.”
Along the shelves inside the store’s current location, films currently available for rent have been meticulously categorized by either genre or director. Directors include some of the titans of Hollywood’s golden age, like Howard Hawks or Frank Capra, alongside directors known more among film aficionados like Sergei Eisenstein and Mario Bava. Genres can be as a typical as comedy or drama, although there are some more obscure categories like Mexican horror and movies focusing on the Japanese yakuza.
Though founded as an alternative to today’s streaming apps, Visions operates on a similar subscription model. Those who sign up can pay an annual certain tiers to rent a certain amount of films per month, with an “unlimited” rental option at $500 a year. With so many films to choose from, the nonprofit’s six co-founders provide their vast film knowledge to help make recommendations and curate selected works.
“I’ve been like really excited about curating a 70s and 80s made-for-TV movie section, which I think is. I’m the only one who cares about that,” said co-founder Daniel Cashman. “Once I got done watching every single over-the-top gory European horror movie, I was like you know what? I just want to focus in on some real middle-of-the-road family dramas.”
Having opened with a collection of 10,000 movies, mostly from donations, Visions has been adding around 1,000 movies per month since opening, according to Meyer. But they also got a big boost after being contacted by an anonymous donor who provided 20,000 films to their collection.
“I’ve been slowly bringing the titles in,” said Jesse Hassinger, another co-founder of the store. “Maybe a tenth of it has been integrated.”
In its five months of operations, Visions has managed to build a dedicated subscriber base, with 300 subscribers currently. Nona Hatay is one such subscriber who joined on opening day back in June.
“This is a great place,” said Hatay, who said she doesn’t subscribe to any streaming services. “It’s a great asset for Northampton.”
But the store will likely need to expand its space to make room for the entirety of its collection. Fortunately, an opportunity to do just that arrived when the landlord of the former Haymarket reached out to ask if they would be interested in moving after plans for other prospective tenants fell through.
“It’s going to be divided into two floors,” Meyer said of the former Haymarket space. “They came to us and said, would you be interested in one of the two [floors]? Which is a much more manageable task for us.”
The space on the bottom floor will remain empty until another tenant be found.
The space itself currently appears rather barren, with little signs a coffee shop once occupied its area. The Visions team plans to connect to the space by making doorways between its current space and the new one, and building additional shelves to host its vast collection. Meyer said he expected the addition to be completed sometime early next year.
But the construction work is only part of what needs to be done. The remaining films in the collection have to be organized and catalogued before they can be displayed. The Visions team isn’t too worried about that, recalling that during their initial grand opening, volunteers assisted with the cataloging work currently on display.
“Everybody loves film,” Hassinger said. “People want to be involved in something that’s gonna stick around, and anything they can do to help it.”
