Do you ever wonder what became of the good old, cosy Saturday night in? I can’t pinpoint when my version of it disappeared but I think a good chunk vanished about three years ago when, almost overnight, the two or three video rental shops in my London neighbourhood closed down.

In an instant, a whole Saturday ritual was erased. While much of my Saturday night is still intact and sees me dipping into The Economist as the sun disappears, listening to the World Service while ploughing through a stack of favourite magazines (Spanish Architectural Digest, The World of Interiors, Kunel, Casa Brutus), watching Mats work magic in the kitchen with Harumi Kurihara’s cookbook and uncorking something full-bodied, I sorely miss the bracing trip to the video shop.

What’s more frustrating is that I know there are pockets of the world where good rental shops still exist: if I relocated to the West Village in Manhattan or to a leafy neighbourhood in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, I could restore this little exercise that I fear is lost forever.

In a media landscape that offers limitless downloads and services such as Love Film, which sends DVDs through the post, I don’t think I’m being overly nostalgic about the more analogue act of venturing into a bricks and mortar rental shop to stare blankly at a poorly organised wall of discs.

To be sure, my old branch of Prime Time video on Wigmore Street was a dreadful retail experience – titles were poorly displayed by the spine and teetered on the shelf, ensuring it was next to impossible to find something worth renting. The staff were neither passionate about film nor service-minded, so there was little scope to get suggestions on new releases or tips about an obscure Korean title that might be suitable for a drizzly Sunday morning.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t so much about what films we’d end up stuffing into our coat pockets but more about bundling up for a late-night walk to see London going through its Saturday evening motions: the boys and girls from the suburbs hanging out of white Hummer limos, the bare-armed lasses stumbling out of pubs, the Syrian men huddled over shishas and the packs of students looking for somewhere to go after last call. Then, feeling happy in the knowledge that we had a toasty flat to return to armed with something (hopefully) entertaining to watch. More often than not we’d never get beyond the first 20 minutes of the film and would wake up hours later passed out on the sofa.

The disappearance of the rental shop has also left a gap in the neighbourhood. London should be a city full of bookshops and kiosks open well into the wee hours but it is anything but. Paris, New York, Tokyo and Milan have shops of the cultural kind to stimulate customers after they’ve finished dinner, walked out of a cinema, left the theatre or are en route to a late-night bar crawl. London has never been particularly good at this sort of retail and, for a brief moment, the lone little video store was the only place to dash out for mindless Hollywood action or 127 minutes of deep and dark thought from Denmark.

If you’re about to suggest that downloading is the way forward, here is why you’re wrong. There’s nothing more rewarding than spending an hour in a book or music shop surveying covers, cracking book spines and observing what other shoppers are picking up, and the same goes for DVDs. But I find little joy visiting various sites to look for films and then having to wait for them to download. Not only is it time-consuming but there’s something soulless about the procedure. Perhaps it is the loss of ritual, or the relative ease, that makes for such a deadening experience.

I guess I could attempt to create new rituals. Perhaps I could pull on my coat, wrap up in a scarf and go for a brisk walk to the corner shop while the film downloads? Somehow, I suspect it wouldn’t have quite the same effect.

Like the niche comeback of vinyl, there might be scope for a film rental shop revival in a better merchandised, more thoughtfully designed and carefully curated format. Some might argue that because DVDs are so inexpensive there’s no need to rent them anymore but this misses the point. Not only is it wasteful to go out and purchase a DVD that will only be viewed once, it’s a different consumer experience when you borrow as it encourages more sampling and risk-taking.

I’ve yet to find an online experience that’s superior to ye olde shoppe in terms of consumer serendipity. You may not be able to judge a book, CD or DVD by its cover but it’s certainly an excellent starting point. For me, it’s much easier to part with cash at Daunt Books in London, Tsutaya at Roppongi Hills in Tokyo and La Hune in Paris than it is at Amazon and its competitors.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle
tyler.brule@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/brule