Camera Shop closes on Main Street

PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY With the closing of the Camera shop on Main Street, one of the island's favorite tourist destinations for film, batteries and postcards is now located out of town on Sparks Avenue. One of Rick McMorrow's favorite movies is "Trading Places" staring Eddie Murphy as a homeless man and Dan Akroyd as an investment banker, a pair whose lives and addresses are switched, based on a $1 bet.

The movie, filmed in Philadelphia and at the New York Stock Exchange, is a metaphor for the change of address and business that McMorrow and his wife, Ursula, owners of the Camera Shop and Nantucket Video, are undergoing. With a hike in rent and the popularity of renting movies through the mail, the Camera Shop and Nantucket Video can no longer afford to do business at 32 Main Street and must move out of town.

"It's kind of sad in some respects, and it's also a relief," said McMorrow. "It's a lot of work for a little profit. It was great in the summer months, but it slows right down in the winter."

Unable to make it in their second floor space, the McMurrows are moving the camera and photo business to their Mid-Island Photo Express location in the Sanford Boat Building. The McMurrows will also stop their video rental and prints and poster businesses.

"I personally [think] it's a sad thing that Nantucket won't have a variety of things that are quite reasonably priced on a year-round basis for the community," said Ursula McMorrow. "We were open year-round and now with Main Street changing, I feel kind of bad about that, but due to economics, we couldn't stay. The cost of doing business just kind of forced the decision to downsize.

"I think what's really going to be missed is posters and prints."

A climb up the steep pink stairs at 32 Main Street once led people into a multimedia loft where film could be developed, cameras purchased and advice dispensed about photography. Around the corner from the top of the landing were picture frames and Nantucket related cards, and further into the shop, DVD and VHS movies to rent.

The loss of the video rental component of the McMorrows' business was inevitable, as Orange Street Video owner Tom Dickson learned earlier this year.

The popularity of movies-by-mail services forced out the two video rental businesses on island.

Yet, the photography portion of the McMorrow's business is something they were able to sustain for the future, since digital and film photography and video remain economically viable mediums.

"For the Camera Shop, a lot of what you do is you hold people's hands because they don't know how to use their cameras," said Gene Mahon, who sold the Camera Shop and Nantucket Video to Rick and Ursula in 1996. "That does such great PR [public relations] for the island, and over the years, people would come back and say 'my friend said you could help me fix my camera.'"

That unique island service still exists at the Camera Shop's new mid-island location.

"Back in the '70s, video [movie cassette rentals] hadn't even been invented," said Mahon. "I started out with the Camera Shop in the front third of the building [at 42 Main St.] and the middle gallery was a gallery called Quintessence and the back room was the dark room."

Eventually, as viewing movies on VHS cassette began to take off on Nantucket, Mahon purchased 200 videos to rent to islanders around the time Sherburne Associates wanted to renovate the space. Needing a new space and a wider selection of VHSs, Mahon found Dun Gifford who walked into his store one day and offered his financial backing along with several partners. Gifford also held a lease for space that was much cheaper than Mahon's space.

"The rent up there was a great rent. I can't remember what it was, but it was a really a great deal [and] because the video really couldn't fill the upstairs, I put in a print and poster shop and a copy store in there as well," said Mahon. Although Rick McMorrow concedes that movie rentals represented only about 30 percent of his business, the real victims with the last of two video rental operations closing are the island's summer visitors.

"For the people who live here, it's probably not a big deal because we have all found the ways to see a movie, but the people who come here, they don't have a Comcast connection and then they have a couple of kids who want to watch movies on a rainy day," said Mahon. I