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Destroyed Blockbuster kiosk returns, better than before

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One afternoon in late November, Alfonso Castillo was working from home when he heard a big boom from outside his Cornwall Avenue home. Through the window, he spotted a damaged pickup truck being towed away. Not noticing any other damage, he had stopped short of going outside and did not probe the matter further.

Not long after, however, his 12-year-old-son Chris Castillo came home from school noticeably distraught after seeing the blue newspaper box that the father-son duo repurposed into the county’s first Blockbuster kiosk destroyed at the corner of their house.

“That’s when I realized the pickup truck had struck the box,” Alfonso said.

It was just a few months since the two classic movie buffs installed the lending library kiosk, stocking it with their cache of movie DVDs and videotapes in their effort to share the nostalgia for the classics as part of the Be Kind, Rewind: Blockbuster movement.

The box had been reduced to plastic shrapnel scattered everywhere along with damaged VHS tapes and dislodged fence pickets on Alfonso’s lawn. Their coronavirus quarantine father-son passion project lay in shambles with a torn chunk of the box remaining chained to the tall, wooden utility pole that was cracked from the crash.

“Chris was heartbroken,” Alfonso said. “Before I saw it for myself, I thought we could just patch up the broken pieces, but it was clear the box was beyond saving.”

The next day, as he was disposing the pieces, Alfonso stumbled across a shard of plastic with the contact information of the original manufacturer — Go Plastics. After a quick Google search, he found the email address of Brian Bauman, director of Sales at Go Plastics.

Alfonso reached out to Bauman, sharing the story behind their lending library box and their grief over its ensuing loss in hope the company could find another beat-up box they can purchase at a discount. Instead, Bauman and Go Plastics sent over a brand-new, state-of-the-art model that—  aside from paying shipping costs — came at virtually no expense to Alfonso and Chris.

“Alfonso strikes me as a really great dad, and seeing his son upset, he reached out to us for help,” Bauman said. “I guess I could also just tell that they have a great family, and helping Christopher out was just the right thing to do.”

“When I saw it, I was blown away,” Alfonso said, as he and his son marveled at the attention to detail Go Plastics paid in replicating the iconic “Be Kind, Rewind” and “Take a Movie, Leave a Movie” decals Alfonso and Chris printed.

The box also held roughly twice the shelf space of its predecessor. And to give the Blockbuster box its own personal touch, Chris made sure to spray-paint the Blockbuster logo. 

“We’ve been making newspaper boxes since 1987, so making a box for Chris and Alfonso was nothing out of the ordinary for us,” said Bauman. “He sent me a picture of the damaged box, and we just sort of reworked the artwork here on our end and applied it to the box so that it would be street-ready when they received it.”

“What Brian and Go Plastics did was restore my faith in humanity,” Alfonso said.

The next act of goodwill came a little closer to home. 

News of the wrecked Blockbuster kiosk hit the local Facebook group “Valley Stream News and Views” drawing an outpouring of support from residents. Alfonso posted information about the christening of the brand-new lending box in early December of last year, asking for help restocking it with DVD donations. Residents gladly chipped in.

Waldinger Memorial Library director Mamie Eng got in on the action donating the library’s own selection of DVDs.

“It’s got more movies than ever before with new releases and all that. And it’s great,” Alfonso said. “It was a lovely gesture at the very beginning of the holiday season, so it was like a little Christmas miracle.”

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