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A shared love of weird cinema is one of the reasons Kevin Cole and Qas Jordan fell for each other.
↑ Like-minded fans of the trash film genre flock
For the Love of Trash Cap City Video Lounge celebrates Tallahassee’s weird side by ERIN HOOVER
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n the 1990 horror/comedy film “Troll 2,” vegetarian goblins try to change a family into vegetables in order to eat them. Despite the name, “Troll 2” is unrelated to the more popular film, “Troll”; distributors merely hoped to market the film as a sequel. “Troll 2” is widely considered one of the worst films ever made, and Kevin Cole loves it. The West Tennessee Street video rental store and movie theater Cole runs with his wife, Qas Jordan, is dedicated to “the stuff you can’t find anywhere else,” films he calls trash or weird cinema. Films like “Troll 2.” Cole worked at the now defunct rental store Video 21 for years and curated weekly trash cinema nights at Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack before opening Cap City Video Lounge in December 2016. For the record, his favorite movie is the 1969 drama classic Midnight Cowboy”; Jordan is a fan of
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“Harold and Maude” and “Exorcist III.” Asked for a more complete definition of the hard-to-describe “trash” genre, Cole listed a few adjectives: unique, entertaining and endearing. “It’s the thing someone poured their heart into and really wanted to work, but (the film) didn’t necessarily take.” You’d be surprised who likes trash cinema, he said. “We get everybody. They hear about us through word of mouth or Facebook. For the most part, it’s word of mouth — people want to share Cap City Video Lounge.” Cole and Jordan moonlight at the business after full days at other jobs, renting VHS, DVD and Blu-rays — a combination of Cole’s personal library and donations from film aficionados with no more room to store prized DVD collections. They screen double features, triple features and Saturday all-day marathons in a comfortable theater with a high-definition projector, professional sound system and seats
to the lounge for screenings, rentals, popcorn popped in coconut oil, dill pickles, Slim Jims and alt ambiance.
trucked north from a Hialeah church. “We get a lot of people who bring dates here. It’s always the horror movies, the fright flicks. You bring a girl or a guy to a scary movie, it brings you closer,” Cole said. A relatively cheap date option, Cap City Video Lounge charges from $1 to $3 for movie rentals, and screenings run a $5 donation per person. The venue also does a brisk business renting out the screening room for private parties at the very reasonable rate of $1 per minute; guests bring their own refreshments or buy buckets of popcorn popped in sweet coconut oil, or dill pickles and Slim Jims. Cole said that for an upcoming birthday party, a girl turning 12 planned to screen “UHF”
Cap City Video Lounge 2790-2 West Tennessee Street (850) 765-0147 facebook.com/capcityvideolounge
PHOTOTS BY ALICIA OSBORNE
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