Surprise ending for Silver Screen Video: ‘To Be Continued’

An island favorite won't be drawing the curtains on business as planned.

It seems the loyal customers of Silver Screen Video have made the right amount of ruckus over its announcement to close.

The Bainbridge Island video store, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in the same month that it announced its closure, has decided to stay in business.

“If I hadn’t felt that everybody wanted us to stay so much, I would have not done it,” said storeowner Jerry Clark.

Clark will be transferring his 15,000 to 20,000 titles to a smaller location off of Hildebrand Lane.

The customers were the number-one factor for Clark’s change of plans in closing up shop.

Aside from Safeway, Silver Screen Video is one of just four remaining video stores listed in the Kitsap County Yellow Pages, with the other three in Silverdale or Bremerton.

For islanders who have limited access to cable or online entertainment, Silver Screen has been the go-to place for picking up a disc with the latest or greatest from Hollywood.

Customers know the changing movie rental landscape, Clark said.

“People were extremely understanding that it’s a change in (the) technology world,” he said.

“But at the same time, they understood they had a local source for movies that most places don’t have anymore.”

Silver Screen Video will be closing their doors for good at the High School Road location Saturday. The store’s sequel will be coming soon, however. The store will reopen around the corner the following Tuesday or Wednesday at a location in the Hildebrand Village commercial area.

“We don’t have time to do it another way; we have to do it right away,” Clark said.

The new storefront offers Clark an affordable rent and more reason to downsize on his stock of titles.

“By cleaning up our inventory, we’ll be able to get a better handle on what we have and what we need and what we don’t need,” Clark explained.

The profits earned from the close-out sale over the past month relieved much of the store’s financial stress. It also put Clark in a better position to continue renting to the island.

Clark says the store will continue to sell DVDs through the whole moving phase to cut down on the excess of dated titles.

At the moment, the store not only has more than enough to continue business but it also has about 5,000 extra titles sitting in a storehouse.

Since making the decision to keep business going, he fully intends to replace customer favorites like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” or “The Birdcage” that were sold during the close-out sale.

“Change in life is always constant, and sometimes you have to rethink your decisions. And that’s what we did,” Clark said.