Sixteen years ago, Colin Hutton broke a record that he will never come close to reaching again.

It was a Friday night in 2009. Barack Obama was president, and “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas was on the radio. Blockbuster was one year away from filing for bankruptcy, but at Hutton’s video rental shop in Noe Valley, business was booming. On that particular Friday night, he rented out 300 DVDs to customers: “Wall-E” and the like for families, “Paranormal Activity” for college kids and their dates. 

Flash-forward to 2025, and Hutton hasn’t seen a 100-movie day in 10 years. “It just doesn’t happen the same way it used to,” he tells me.

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He’s more matter-of-fact than mournful. Hutton, 56, is the movie maven behind Video Wave, one of San Francisco’s last video stores. We’re standing in his shop, where the walls are crammed with more than 28,000 DVDs. It’s a Thursday, and Hutton has squeezed in some time to chat before the store opens at 1 p.m. In between questions, he pauses to take a bite out of a Starbucks egg sandwich, which he rests on top of a stack of papers near the register. His white hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and he wears thin rectangular glasses. 

Video Wave stands nestled in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood at 4027 24th St., as seen on Thursday afternoon, May 15, 2025.

Colin Hutton, owner of Video Wave, takes a moment among rows of DVDs at his video rental store in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood on Thursday afternoon, May 15, 2025.

A neon sign glows in the front window of Video Wave in San Francisco’s Noe Valley on Thursday, May 15, 2025. The video rental shop has served the community since 1983 and is among the last of its kind.

Shelves packed with DVDs fill the interior of Video Wave in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood on Thursday afternoon, May 15, 2025.

Video Wave isn’t the last place in San Francisco where you can rent a DVD. But it is the city’s last stand-alone, old-school video store. Faye’s in the Mission, with its collection of more than 8,000 DVDs, doubles as a coffee shop. Video Vortex is attached to the Alamo Drafthouse theater.

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For two decades, Hutton has watched San Francisco’s neighborhood video stores fail while shepherding his shop through booms and busts — lately, mostly busts — first as a co-owner and now by himself. In two decades punctuated by the advent of streaming, the death of Blockbuster and the pandemic, he’s grown his collection to a staggering 28,743 DVDs, not to mention VHS tapes and video games. Video Wave is barely breaking even now, kept afloat by around 530 loyal subscribers and Hutton’s stoicism. 

When you first walk through Video Wave’s doors, you’ll notice three things. 

First, the chalkboard sign hanging from the store’s ceiling, declaring, “We Know Movies.” The “we” here is royal, since Video Wave is a one-man operation. Colin Hutton knows movies, but he also pays the rent, organizes DVDs, mails discs to Video Wave’s 21 long-distance subscribers and sweeps the floors. 

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A chalkboard sign reading “Video Wave — We Know Movies” hangs inside the longstanding rental shop in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood on Thursday afternoon, May 15, 2025. At right, owner Colin Hutton stands behind the register.

Second, a slightly crumpled printout of a 2019 article from

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