(originally posted on Jet's Facebook page on 8/28/18)
So many thanks to everyone who turned out on Sunday for a phenomenal last day of business at Jet Video! The day started out slowly for the first hour but quickly picked up speed, and from 6 to 10 PM continuously, we experienced what might have been the most savage ice cream and movie rush in Jet history, with the out-the-door line stretching, by some accounts, all the way down to the Quality Shop, followed by additional flurries from 10 to just past midnight.
Jet, for us, has always been about community, and it was such a joy to connect with everyone who wanted to share in our final day of regular operations. We deeply appreciate your support and couldn't have asked for a better send-off, so thanks to everyone for turning out and for turning others out -- not just today but over the last two months as a whole -- to make this final summer season one of our finest.
We'd also like to take this moment to thank the previous owners of Jet Video over the years, starting with Robin and Dave Turnbull, who converted Video JAM into JET Video in 2004 and imparted it with so much character (and ice cream and a post office!), and Kim and Harold Crabill, who took the reins from Robin and Dave, keeping a great thing going while giving it their own stamp and eventually passing it on to us. Both their reigns over Jet directly and indirectly, through the stories passed down to us by observant staff and customers, taught us so much about what had made Jet so popular and successful and led us to aspire to maintain and to add to the rich tapestry of in-house customs and traditions that had been nurtured here.
We also need to thank not just the workers who lent Jet their skills under the Turnbulls and Crabills but definitely also, of course, those brave souls who were willing to take a chance on hitching their wagons to our creation, Jet Video Cooperative, at one time or another during the past six years. The co-op was our first-ever attempt at running a business and a best-of-intentions experiment in formalizing the already heavily staff-driven culture of Jet into a democratically managed, worker-owned cooperative a la Local Sprouts, a mode of workplace formation that stretches back at least to the Knights of Labor in the 19th century all the way up to the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Democracy at Work Institute, and others of today.
We feel we often fell short in publicly representing this unusual, interesting, and, we think, socially relevant aspect of our version of Jet Video to the extent that we might have liked, so we'll take another moment right now to state that, if you like what you've seen at Jet over the last six or so years, you should thank not just one or two of the most obviously prominent people who've worked here but a wide variety of staff members who attended and contributed constructively to our biweekly or monthly staff meetings during which we made business plans, with several of them also having become part-owners for some length of their tenure. Sharing a business definitely has its challenges, particularly in a shop as small as Jet, where the budget is delicate, and the actions of any one individual can have enormous repercussions for the group, but on the whole, this collective style of managing Jet generated ideas for the business that never would have emerged otherwise and radically changed our perspectives on workplace dynamics.
In rough chronological order, these contributors include: Shana, Lauren, Melinda, Michele, Andrea, Kathryn, Dan, Jennifer, Leah, Julia, and Derek. Honorable mentions include: Al, Elena, Erin, Zaeda, Max, Amanda, Ben, Maren, Anna, Celine, Bailey, Mackenzie, Matt, Sarah, Sadie, Maddie, Gage, and Ella. Additional thanks go to: Paul at Dimensions in Jazz, who has been more subtly influential on Jet over the years than even we can grasp sometimes; Simply Mary; Christina Siravo; Peter at UPS; Barry at USPS; Ron at USPS; the several other great mail carriers at USPS who gave us much less of a hard time than Ron; the great folks at Quality, Pat's, and the other Deering Center businesses who've been so good to us; Garett at Gifford's, Sara at Snapdragon, everyone at Little Lad's, and the many other sales reps and vendors who've treated us well; the local musicians who entrusted their CDs to us for consignment; Paul and the rest of the Independent DVD Store group on Facebook; and a ton of people who'll have to remain unmentioned or else this post will go on forever. Thank you all for the good work you've done; it helped.
So many thanks to everyone who turned out on Sunday for a phenomenal last day of business at Jet Video! The day started out slowly for the first hour but quickly picked up speed, and from 6 to 10 PM continuously, we experienced what might have been the most savage ice cream and movie rush in Jet history, with the out-the-door line stretching, by some accounts, all the way down to the Quality Shop, followed by additional flurries from 10 to just past midnight.
Jet, for us, has always been about community, and it was such a joy to connect with everyone who wanted to share in our final day of regular operations. We deeply appreciate your support and couldn't have asked for a better send-off, so thanks to everyone for turning out and for turning others out -- not just today but over the last two months as a whole -- to make this final summer season one of our finest.
We'd also like to take this moment to thank the previous owners of Jet Video over the years, starting with Robin and Dave Turnbull, who converted Video JAM into JET Video in 2004 and imparted it with so much character (and ice cream and a post office!), and Kim and Harold Crabill, who took the reins from Robin and Dave, keeping a great thing going while giving it their own stamp and eventually passing it on to us. Both their reigns over Jet directly and indirectly, through the stories passed down to us by observant staff and customers, taught us so much about what had made Jet so popular and successful and led us to aspire to maintain and to add to the rich tapestry of in-house customs and traditions that had been nurtured here.
We also need to thank not just the workers who lent Jet their skills under the Turnbulls and Crabills but definitely also, of course, those brave souls who were willing to take a chance on hitching their wagons to our creation, Jet Video Cooperative, at one time or another during the past six years. The co-op was our first-ever attempt at running a business and a best-of-intentions experiment in formalizing the already heavily staff-driven culture of Jet into a democratically managed, worker-owned cooperative a la Local Sprouts, a mode of workplace formation that stretches back at least to the Knights of Labor in the 19th century all the way up to the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Democracy at Work Institute, and others of today.
We feel we often fell short in publicly representing this unusual, interesting, and, we think, socially relevant aspect of our version of Jet Video to the extent that we might have liked, so we'll take another moment right now to state that, if you like what you've seen at Jet over the last six or so years, you should thank not just one or two of the most obviously prominent people who've worked here but a wide variety of staff members who attended and contributed constructively to our biweekly or monthly staff meetings during which we made business plans, with several of them also having become part-owners for some length of their tenure. Sharing a business definitely has its challenges, particularly in a shop as small as Jet, where the budget is delicate, and the actions of any one individual can have enormous repercussions for the group, but on the whole, this collective style of managing Jet generated ideas for the business that never would have emerged otherwise and radically changed our perspectives on workplace dynamics.
In rough chronological order, these contributors include: Shana, Lauren, Melinda, Michele, Andrea, Kathryn, Dan, Jennifer, Leah, Julia, and Derek. Honorable mentions include: Al, Elena, Erin, Zaeda, Max, Amanda, Ben, Maren, Anna, Celine, Bailey, Mackenzie, Matt, Sarah, Sadie, Maddie, Gage, and Ella. Additional thanks go to: Paul at Dimensions in Jazz, who has been more subtly influential on Jet over the years than even we can grasp sometimes; Simply Mary; Christina Siravo; Peter at UPS; Barry at USPS; Ron at USPS; the several other great mail carriers at USPS who gave us much less of a hard time than Ron; the great folks at Quality, Pat's, and the other Deering Center businesses who've been so good to us; Garett at Gifford's, Sara at Snapdragon, everyone at Little Lad's, and the many other sales reps and vendors who've treated us well; the local musicians who entrusted their CDs to us for consignment; Paul and the rest of the Independent DVD Store group on Facebook; and a ton of people who'll have to remain unmentioned or else this post will go on forever. Thank you all for the good work you've done; it helped.