A peek inside the world of Mondo Video, a little shop on Cherokee that’s making a go of it, Netflix or no
By Steve Pick
Photograph by Peter Newcomb
Steve McQueen is the new recruit among a group of toughs plotting a bank robbery. There’s a noirish feeling in the air as the four men meet in a gazebo at Tower Grove Park, eyeing the nearby Southwest Bank at Kingshighway and Southwest. McQueen paces and sweats, looking strangely brutal in his college letterman’s jacket. As he leaves, we glimpse behind him a long-gone black-and-white version of South City circa 1959—Cadillacs, coffee shops, grannies in chiffon head scarves ... and no chain stores.
You won’t find this film, The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery, at your local video big-box. Tonight it’s being screened inside St. Louis’ newest DVD store, Mondo Video, the creation of 41-year-old Mark Williams, who opened up shop in January and now stocks about 150 movies (to buy, not to rent) and a handful of T-shirts. Williams can personally recommend everything he sells; his enthusiasm is infectious.
“The main idea I had was to stock the movies that kind of fall down the memory hole at places like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video,” he says. “After a year or so, if a movie doesn’t rent, they trash it—and a lot of good movies are just forgotten that way.”
You won’t find the latest Olsen twins vehicle here, but you will find both The Godfather and Finian’s Rainbow, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. You’ll find David Cronenberg films as familiar as Naked Lunch and as obscure as The Brood. You can pick up the rerelease of Apocalypse Now, the cult classic Repo Man and the original 1975 version of The Wicker Man. (“I’ve ignored the remake,” Williams says archly of last year’s poorly received Nicolas Cage thriller, “but it’s done well to remind people of the original, which is a great movie.”)
On weekend afternoons, he chooses a rare film to show in the store. He’s run Winsor McCay cartoons from the World War I era, a British rendition of Frankenstein: The True Story and the aforementioned Bank Robbery.
Walking into Mondo, one gets the sense of a project in its early days. The walls are freshly painted, the backroom is unfinished, there are a few chairs set in front of the TV screen and DVDs fill two shelving units and a lone table.
“I found some interesting designs at the Store Supply Warehouse on Page,” Williams explains, “but being brand-new, they were out of my price range. Fortunately, I remembered some wood shutters I’d seen at the ReStore that could be adapted with a couple of hinges and a few one-by-eight planks. For once in my life, a do-it-yourself project worked out right!”
Williams is excited to be located on the Cherokee Street strip. “There’s such a great diversity on the street. The best tacos in town. It’s just a very cozy little street ... It reminds me of Springfield [Missouri, where Williams grew up] and of certain streets in the Bronx. You don’t have the population density, but you have a variety of stores. Now that the weather’s gotten a little better, I’ve gotten a little drop-in traffic. Of course ... I want to be out there myself, sometimes.”
Williams is totally dedicated to the shop, though. When a visitor to one of the stlouielouie.com forums commented that with Netflix kicking all kinds of booty, opening a video store in ’07 was like “getting into the typewriter business in 1989,” Williams shrugged and acknowledged that, yep, it seems a little crazy. But he wants to do it anyway.
“Renting a movie you love isn’t the same as owning it,” Williams typed back. “It’s the difference between owning an album and hearing it on the radio ... I don’t think Netflix will ruin movies any more than libraries have ruined books.” And so it just may be that between the big boxes and the ease of Netflix, there’s a niche that’s the perfect size for a smart, passionate little video store like Mondo.
Mondo Video can be found at 2834 Cherokee. Hours are noon–5 p.m. Thu–Sun; call 314-773-6202 or visit myspace.com/mondostl.
