In the heart of Mokena, Illinois, and for longer than I’ve been alive, there has been a movie rental store on the corner of Wolf Road and Front Street. Nestled in the (generously named) Downtown, the store sits in the center of the community, and it has for many years.
I had, like many people in town, gone there every now and then throughout my life. When I was young, I remembered just how expansive the selection felt. I could only see the bottom shelves, and had to either be lifted or had to jump to see anything more. It felt like the place had everything.
Then, many years later in October of 2021, as a fifteen year old at acceptable shelf-viewing height, I fell in love with movies. No longer completely guided by the taste of my parents, I scoured the various streaming services and old closet-DVDs for all they had to offer. I would plan my homework around having time for a weekday movie (Wednsdays were my favorite day of the week, because I had no after school plans which meant maybe I could watch two movies). However, I quickly ran into a roadblock: there were movies I wanted to watch, yet couldn’t find them anywhere.
I double checked and triple checked, yet found no results. I brought up this complaint to my dad, wondering how he’d survived back in the pre-internet times, and he gave a simple answer: “Oh, you’d just head down to the video store.”
“Like Mokena Video?”
“Yeah. Is that place still open?”
So we checked, and it was. Upon arrival, something was different about the place. On the internet, it said it was open, but when we pulled up to the oblong building there was a big, glowing State Farm sign in the window. “That’s weird.”
But sure enough, Mokena Video was still there. No longer the sprawling rows of shelves, it was now only one hallway on one half of the building, lined to the brim with movie after movie. The hallways lead to the desk, where a middle aged man sat listening to a football game.
I was impressed by the selection and got my first movie (Eighth Grade) and continued to go every Sunday for the next two years, including this past Sunday (Double Indemnity).
The store had always fascinated me. It seemed like a relic of a bygone era that still clung to life after all these years. It became a part of my Sunday ritual, keeping my interest in movies alive by giving me an excuse to watch at least one a week (“Mom, I have to, it’s due back later today”).
Eventually, I decided to ask that man at the desk if I could talk to him about the store. After long past becoming a “regular,” I thought I should get familiar with the place. After I asked him, he chuckled in a way that seemed receptive yet surprised that anyone would even care to ask. But he agreed.
***
Bob Braeunig grew up in Mokena.
As a young man in the late 1970’s, Braeunig had worked at a record store in Orland Park. He had always wanted his own business, more specifically, a record store. He assumed that would be his path, until he realized that there was a better, more profitable business endeavor: the burgeoning concept of the video store.
Braeunig would go to parking lots in front of video stores and he would simply watch customers flowed in and out at a constant rate, movie in bag, excitement on their face. He knew that this was the future. This was where he’d be. In 1985, Braeunig’s father bought the property the store inhabits to this day: a long, white-bricked building beside the train tracks.
That day, Braeunig sat in a Wendy’s with a movie guide, trying to come up with the best selection of movies for his store. He’d come up with 653, mostly just the basic icons like Casablanca or It’s a Wonderful Life (His selection today sits at 25,000).
Originally, it was just–
***
“Hey, Bob!”
The door opened as Bob was mid sentence. An older couple had come in and began surveying the new release section. Bob smiled at the familiar faces. He turned to me and said “Don’t worry, it’ll just be a minute. There shouldn’t be too many people today.”
I assured him it wasn’t a problem. After a few minutes of debating, the couple came up to his desk with two movie-chips, an in-store currency to signify their choice. The husband laughed. “I let her pick one this time, too.”
The woman gave him a playful-angry face. Bob laughed, too. “That’s how you gotta do it.” He went into the back to grab their DVDs. The couple placed the $6 on the table and left with their movies. The door slammed closed.
Bob sat back down. “Where was I?”
***
Braeunig and his father built the movie racks themselves and opened up the store in 1985. Another local video store owner came in and warned that the rental business was on the decline, nearing the end of its life…in 1985. Braeunig chalked it up to the guy not wanting another video store opening up down the street and ignored him.
Turned out to be the right choice. The store took off immediately. By 1986, it was really “cooking.” Braeunig reinvested every dollar he made into making the store bigger and better. He had taken over the entirety of the building, the store now being more than 6,000 square feet. More space, more movies, more customers, more everything.
Braeunig claims the store peaked in about 1996. He speaks very fondly of these days. Business was booming, employees were good, and it all felt “too good to be true.”
Back then, customers would stand and wait at the new release wall waiting for the small chip to go back on the hook. “It was like watching people standing in front of the refrigerator waiting for food to magically appear.”
At the time, video stores had exclusivity of new releases for several months until the mass release. People would wait outside (he specifically recalls the release of Scream 2 being extra chaotic) before opening just to grab it while they had a chance. He sometimes would have to buy 25-30 copies for a major movie just to keep up with the demand.
However, in 1998, he took his first hit. A Blockbuster opened in Mokena, taking–
***
“Hey, Bob, how’s it going?” The door opened again. A tall man walked in with a big coat on. He carried with him the small, clear DVD case. “Is there some event going on out there? Buncha people dressed as reindeer or something.”
He strolled up to the counter and dropped his DVD on it. He didn’t browse much. He asked specifically for what he wanted, and Bob nodded and grabbed it for him from the back. The guy placed $3 on the table; he already knew the price, of course. It had been the same way for the many years he’d been coming here.
“Thanks, Bob. See ya next week.”
“I’ll see ya!”
***
The man left. Bob returned to his chair. “What was I saying?”
I couldn’t remember, so we went to a new topic. I asked a question on the less positive side. “Well, Blockbuster closed back in 2014. Is there a moment, maybe when you saw that, that when you realized this whole rental era was going to end?”
“There was a chain around here that closed in around 2002, and I remember hearing that they closed down and reading about why they closed down. This was right at the start of streaming, and all that stuff was in the near future. There were other avenues to watch movies. The pie was being cut into limited parts. Anybody with brains would’ve…” He chuckled. “Maybe phased down around then. But I enjoyed this so much that I kept going.”
Blockbusters took a large chunk of Braeunig’s customer base right off the bat. Several opened up in just the immediate area, including one in Mokena just down the road. The store was not performing nearly as well as it had been before, but Braeunig resisted. On the topic of Netflix, Braeunig said that he knew it would be formidable, but it was coming about in the midst of a decline.
He credits one reason he is still open today is how decentralized the streaming age quickly became. Braeunig expected there to eventually be one service with all the movies on it, yet that never happened. Everyone was so protective of their own content that they made their own streaming services, making it harder for the consumer to access them. “People are always coming in saying ‘Oh, I can’t find this movie anywhere!’ And that’s one of the reasons I think I’m still open.”
Despite this, business was steeply declining. Throughout the 2010s, the store size decreased dramatically. It first lost a third of the building, then two thirds, then half of that remaining third. Today, it’s just one narrow hallway, the movies stuffed to the brim on their ledges like library shelves instead of facing outward on display. “I knew once I did that, and people couldn’t browse, that would be a problem.”
And obviously, the pandemic was detrimental. People were inside, prioritizing purchases, and, worst of all, the movies stopped coming out. Upon the mention of the era, Brauenig simply said, nearly with a shudder, “It was bad. Oh, it was bad.”
More of his customers returned as society became further distanced from the pandemic. Movies began releasing again, too.
Brauenig cites the state of movies, particularly comedies, as another reason for declined business. For example–
***
“Hey, Bob!” The door opened a third time. This time, a father and son entered with three or four movies in their hands. They stopped by the new release shelf and talked about which family member would want what, who would and wouldn’t watch what they picked, etc, etc.
Once they reached their decision, they came up to the counter. The father placed the movies down. “Matt will probably enjoy that one.” The son agreed.
Bob went back to replace their movies. I thought their names were familiar, so I asked about a possible mutual connection. They were friends of a friend, like most people around here. “We’re in the house with all the Christmas decorations!” I knew that one; I passed it every week on the way here.
Bob came back with their movies and exchanged them for the ones returned. The two thanked him and walked out of the store. Bob grabbed the returned movies to put them in his DVD cleaner.
He talked as he worked. “Back in the 90s, there were so many good comedies coming out. These days…It’s the writing that’s suffered. It’s like people don’t want to spend the time–”
The door opened again, only it wasn’t a new face this time. The boy walked in alone, carrying a bag of warm PandaExpress. Bob shook his head at the display.
“No, no, no–”
The boy had a big smile on his face as he marched up the store. “We have to, I mean, we already got it, so…”
Bob gave me a sheepish look. “They always do this.” The boy placed the food on the counter. “Thank you. Really.”
The boy handed it to him. “No problem. Have a goodnight, Mr. Bob.” The boy walked out.
Bob stared at the food and shook his head. “They always do that.” He went back over to the DVD cleaner and opened the first case. “Anyway, all the movies now, don’t rent for very long–” He stopped. The DVD he had opened was completely ruined, in a way that spelled years of dysfunction. Yet the two said nothing about the fact that they couldn’t watch the movies they’d paid for. They were just happy to support his business.
Bob tossed the DVD to the side. “That one’s done.”
***
Bob Brauenig is a very hardworking man. He has run his own business for nearly four decades, and continues to do what he loves.
When my dad and I first went into his store back in 2021, we must have remarked on the new State Farm installed on the street-facing side, because his business briefly came up. He admitted to us that the store wasn’t doing great, but that he wasn’t going to give up just yet. I remember his words clearly: “I’m not going down without a fight.”
Maybe it was those words that brought me back week after week to support a business that I thoroughly enjoy; niche local businesses and movies, that’s my perfect combination. But those words made me respect the man behind the counter who still continued to run a store most would consider to be obsolete (though I would strongly disagree that an in-person store is obsolete, as Bob has never steered me wrong with any of his recommendations).
At the end of our interview, I asked Bob how many of his current patrons are ones that come back close to once a week. “How many are your loyalty-type customers?”
He didn’t hesitate. “All of them.”
