"Naro Expanded Video opened in Norfolk, Virginia in 1989 as part of a network of five Mid-Atlantic video stores owned by Barry Solan. In 1996, Solan took his entire stock of videos and sold the business to two locals: Tim Cooper, an alt-weekly film critic, and his wife, Linda McGreevy, an art historian and professor. Starting from scratch with their own collection of VHS tapes, Tim and Linda moved Naro Video to its longtime home on Colley Ave in Norfolk’s historic Ghent neighborhood.
Together, with a knowledgeable staff, Tim and Linda made Naro Video into a counter-culture landmark, a space dedicated to the sort of films that its corporate competition overlooked: challenging indies; global cinema; queer canon; documentaries on history, art and religion; a deep reservoir of classic Hollywood films; and the purest, most terrible trash. Naro’s collection grew to be one of the largest video rental collections on the East Coast, with over 42,000 titles in circulation."
Excerpt, VIDEO STORES STILL EXIST, VOLUME TWO by Lunchmeat VHS.
