We here at Lunchmeat are absolutely thrilled at the opportunity to share these pieces of AVP’s home video history with you over the next several months, which is undoubtedly an incredible opportunity for intimate insight on the often shadowy and undocumented details of the video era.
Through Junko’s stewardship of the exhaustive AVP archive, and a connection to the original owners, he has amassed a complete documented history of this magnificent independent video store, featuring 32+ years of communication, photos, catalogs, various paper ephemera, found footage, and of course, myriad stories of influence and culture. The heir to that immense amount of video treasure is Benny Junko, who is the night manager over at Video Sanctum, and now the official archivist for the Audio/Video Plus empire. The store also held a stockpile of warehoused retail VHS and Betamax spanning the entirety of the three decades from its origin in the late 70s.
At their closure in 2012, the store had built a VHS rental library of 60,000 titles and at least two-thirds of these repeated on Betamax. Images courtesy of Benny Junko / Video Sanctum.Īt the height of AVP in the mid-1980s, the store boasted one of the largest video libraries in Texas. To those who knew the place, there was a general consensus solidified about A/V Plus: if AVP didn’t have it, it simply didn’t exist.Ī collection of photos from the Audio/Video Plus archive. It sounds like a bold statement, but it was true.
It was a place that carried everything in the video realm: every title, every variation, and every persuasion of home video was available within their walls. Audio/Video Plus (also affectionately known as A/V Plus and AVP) became a powerhouse one-stop shop for all things relatable to its namesake, videocassette rentals and sales in specific. Photo by Jack Lawrence.Įstablished in 1979 by proprietors Lou Berg and Susan Gee, Houston, TX-based Audio/Video Plus was a pioneer and respective giant in the video rental and retail business. The AVP Storefront, now vacant, after many years of video excellence.
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