A Bright Spot in This Gray Pre-Christmas Day
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
When we first purchased a Betamax machine there was a special thrill
to visiting video rental stores that suddenly cropped up everywhere. Unlike the
ones these days, the cannabis stores, they did not smell awful and you never
felt guilty about visiting them.
As soon as Betamax was gone, and VHS became the only game in
town, there was just a tad less of a thrill. But come Christmas, on those lazy
days after Christmas when we enjoyed leftovers, and I had whatever marzipan was
left, it was special to watch films. It was even more special to find some
classic film at Videomatica.
The thrill that is left in this age of Netflix for me is
randomly looking at the DVDs in my local public library.
There was one very special thrill (two in fact) in the late
80s and early 90s. This was going to the Rogers store on 16th and
Oak.
Working at the store was the gorgeous (are we male sexist
pigs allowed to use that word?) Virve Reid, with her cutsy Marilyn Monroe voice
and flaming red hair beckoned only as she could. She was my friend so I did not
need to find a reason to communicate with her.
Reid posed for me many times. In this pre-Christmas lazy day
I found this colour negative that I never printed or scanned. It is gray outside
and raining. There is something grand in looking at a picture of our mid-summer
Athlone in Kerrisdale garden and feast my eyes on the glamour that Virve was.
I
can remember her voice as she posed, “Is this what you want?” and I snapped my
Mamiya shutter. With tons of black and white photographs of Virve I am so glad
that I at least took these to help cheer me up for the season.
