Kim’s Video Returning To NYC with Guest Appearance by Founder Yougman Kim
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The original Kim’s Video on Avenue A in Manhattan was the “go-to place for rare selections” and “widely known among the cognoscenti of new, experimental and esoteric music and film.”
It was founded by Youngman Kim.
The store later expanded to five other locations, including St. Mark’s Place (Mondo Kim’s) in the East Village, Kim’s Underground at 144 Bleecker Street (on Laguardia Place), Kim’s West (350 Bleecker Street & West 10th Street), and Kim’s Mediapolis (2906 Broadway) . By 2008, it had over 55,000 rental titles, many of which were rare or esoteric.
The store closed in 2014.
Bedford and Bowery did a story called “The Story of Kim’s Video & Music, Told By Its Clerks and Customers” in 2014 that was an entertaining oral history of the store.
One of the funnier anecdotes involved a squirrel:
CHRISTOPHER PRAVDICA, ex-clerk, musician, member of Swans
It was all because of Matt Marello that the whole thing happened.Mr. Kim used to own Kim’s Laundromat across from Tompkins Square Park, by Odessa. And Matt Morello was a film student who was a musician. He got the idea to put his video collection on the floor of the laundromat, because he knew all the people that came in might be interested in renting. Apparently the videos were gone all the time, so Mr. Kim basically opened up a video store for him to run down the block.
A friend — the singer from Texas is the Reason, Garrett [Klahn] — was working there and said they were hiring. I think I just came in and they were like, “You start on this day.”
When I was working at the Avenue A store (I guess it would have been ’96 to ’98), Matt Marello was still there. So the original idea of just putting up his own personal videos kind of stayed with the place, even when the other stores were opened. Matt would tape stuff off TV, if it didn’t have commercials, and then make a box for it. By the time I was working there most of the stuff came through the proper channels, but if you dug deep in the library there were some things in there.
I remember the copy of Seconds was taped off of AMC. It had the AMC logo on it. That was one of the cool things about Kim’s: if they had the movie but couldn’t get it officially, they would still put it up.
I came along and started helping him put together a collection of tapes. I was a film buff, so it got a good reputation and developed into a hot spot in the neighborhood… We went against every business model that says, “The customer is always right.” But I think in the end, people sort of liked the grungy East Village thing. —Matt Marello, ex-manager, artist, musician (NY Times, 2004)
Mr. Kim was hard to read. He was very Korean and a businessman, so it was way out of anything I can relate to. He had a weird sense of humor, and the other Korean people he hired were strange to me, too. There was a Kim’s catalog every year, and they would show all the new stuff they had on Laserdisc or video or whatever. One year it had this statement on the front that was something along the lines of: “Once there was a boy born in Korea, his name was Yongman and then he moved to New York, and here are the fruits of his labor.” It was very strange, I didn’t know what to make of it. He had some weird complex about himself — self-centered or something.
He barely knew me, because by then it was all about the St. Marks store. When I first started working on Avenue A, the St. Marks Kim’s was further west. And while I was working at Kim’s they moved into that other spot and it was the Mondo Kim’s. Mega Kim’s. All of his focus was over there. Avenue A was just like, “eh, whatever.”
I was so young — 19 or 20. Kembra Pfahler from the band Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black flirted with me very heavy in the porn room once. She wanted to date me in the porn room. I was so scared.
In the porno section in the back, the wall didn’t go up to the ceiling, so it was exposed to the outside. They used to have plastic sheets in there, because that was what would keep the cold out from the rest of the place. It was like walking into a cooler or a meat market when you walked into the porn section. In the winter it was freezing cold back there.
As a result, these squirrels used to come in there and cause havoc. You’d open it up in the morning and the boxes would be all chewed up. One day we opened up and there were squirrel body parts everywhere — pieces of squirrel, and blood and guts — because an alley cat or a tom cat had moved into the porn room and nested next to the boiler. They named him Chunks, because of the squirrel chunks, and put out a little litter box and food for him and he just lived back there. He was really big and mean, if you went anywhere near him. If you peaked over the divider between him and you, you’d just see him and he’d be pissed.
One day he died and crawled into the wall. I had to reach in the wall to pull him out — stiff as a board.
Kims is returning with Alamo House March 31st. From the press release:
Greetings!
Please join us to celebrate the grand re-opening of Kim’s Video at its new home inside Alamo Drafthouse Cinema – Lower Manhattan. Featuring a rare public appearance by the store’s founder, Yougman Kim, a live band, cocktails, and more. Still and video cameras are welcome! Invitation below with additional details.
Please RSVP to brad@fonspr.com by Monday, March 28th if you would like to attend.
ON BACKGROUND
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema was founded in 1997 as a single-screen mom and pop repertory theater in Austin, TX. Twenty-five years later, with 36 locations and counting, Alamo Drafthouse has been called “the best theater in America” by Entertainment Weekly and “the best theater in the world” by Wired. Alamo Drafthouse has built a reputation as a movie lover’s oasis not only by combining food and drink service with the movie-going experience, but also introducing unique programming and high-profile, star-studded special events. Alamo Drafthouse created Fantastic Fest, a world-renowned film festival dubbed “The Geek Telluride” by Variety. Fantastic Fest showcases eight days of genre cinema from independents, international filmmakers, and major Hollywood studios. Alamo Drafthouse’s collectible art gallery, Mondo, offers breathtaking, original products featuring designs from world-famous artists based on licenses for popular TV and movie properties including Star Wars, Star Trek & Universal Monsters. Alamo Drafthouse continues to expand its brand in new and exciting ways, including the American Genre Film Archive, a non-profit film archive dedicated to preserving, restoring and sharing film, and Alamo On Demand, a new VOD platform boasting a growing and carefully curated library of entertainment for rental or purchase.
