Our Story

The history of Scarecrow is not unlike many of the films and television episodes in its extensive video collection: twists, turns and numerous unanticipated developments! What follows is an illustration of our epic journey, thus far!

The story of Scarecrow Video begins way-back-when in 1983 when Rebecca and George Latsios relocated from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Seattle, Washington. George always had a fondness for films and played with the notion of starting his own video store. Try as they might, their lack of capital made the initial creation of a Pacific Northwest vidéothèque impossible.

In 1986, George consigned roughly two-hundred of his own personal VHS tapes to a shelf in Prof. Fred Hopkins’ Backtrack Records and Video. A few years later, while working as a general manager of a local restaurant, George became frustrated with making money for other people. He quit! He convinced Rebecca that the time was right to open a video store of their own and—on the 9th day of December, 1988 (promptly at noontime Friday)—Scarecrow Video was born! Containing a then-immense inventory of six-hundred titles, the Latona store was a mere ripple in the lake that would become Scarecrow. Five customers signed up that initial day and $36 in rental-revenue was generated. An auspicious beginning!

Rebecca continued to work two jobs to help fund their project and spent her free time building the shelves and creating signage for the new store. By 1990, Scarecrow continued its metamorphosis by adding computer kiosks and rapidly increasing the number of titles available. Scarecrow soon encountered what would become a recurring theme year after year: it ran out of space! George and Rebecca rented the adjoining retail space in 1992 and Scarecrow nearly doubled in size (from 1,000 to 1,900 square feet). Around this time, the laserdisc collection started to expand exponentially and the first PAL tapes entered the store, allowing customers to see films from far-away places which were never commercially released in the U.S.

It only took a year before that extra space wasn’t enough.

On another Friday, the 19th day of November, 1993, Scarecrow moved a short distance across town to its current—and, seemingly [spoiler alert], permanent!—location of 5030 Roosevelt Way N.E.. With 8,600 square feet, there was plenty of room for the 18,000 titles that came along from the Latona location. There was more than enough space that, at the beginning of 1995, Scarecrow opened the Sanctuary microcinematheque on the second floor. With only eighteen seats, it was one of the smaller screening rooms in the city but it had a dedicated following, regularly included in John Hartl’s weekly round-up of repertory programming each Friday in the Seattle Times.

This was also the year that George was diagnosed with a brain tumor and given only a handful of months to live. Instead of slowing down, this just increased George and Rebecca’s desire to make the Scarecrow collection the largest and most comprehensive in the entire world! They traveled to Japan and Europe, picking up movies along the way for the Seattle store (along with inventory for a speculative second store intended for either San Francisco or Vancouver, British Columbia). They put nearly every dollar into bringing in more and more titles, even tapes and discs that were wildly expensive and irrational additions.

In 1997, Scarecrow became one of the first video stores to add a exhaustive DVD section, adding at least one of every release. Sanctuary closed in 1998 when Jonathan Marlow, its founder / programmer, relocated to Berlin (and the footprint of that diminutive venue now houses the Comedy and Drama sections). George defied his prognosis and continued to fight for the thing he loved most: movies! However, this devotion to building the largest video collection was accompanied by substantial debt. He was the first to admit that he was not much of a businessperson. When the amount owed reached into the hundreds-of-thousands and employment taxes remained unpaid, the foundation of Scarecrow began to crack. Bankruptcy was looming.

Two Microsoft employees and long-time customers—Carl Tostevin and John Dauphiny—heard about Scarecrow’s financial issues in 1998. Cineastes themselves, they could not bear the thought of the collapse of a Seattle institution. There were many long conversations with Rebecca and George and the staff about preserving Scarecrow’s vision. On February 18th, 1999, a sale was approved, and Carl and John—along with Mickey McDonough—became the new owners of Scarecrow Video! George and Rebecca stayed involved as consultants until George relocated to Greece. He ultimately succumbed to his illness in 2003.

In 2004, John bowed-out of Scarecrow, leaving Mickey and Carl to steer the collection through the next decade of unimaginable highs and the start of a new kind of low. During their fifteen-year tenure, the Scarecrow collection grew and grew! VHS and laserdiscs made way for more DVDs and, thereafter, Blu-rays. Scarecrow had a little more than 34,000 titles when they took over. When Premiere Magazine named Scarecrow the “coolest video store in the country” in 2001, the number of discs and tapes had grown to 46,000; by 2014, it had ballooned to 120,000! Many more titles meant continuously reimagining the space and innovating ways to display the collection. Nearly everything could be faced-out on shelves when the Roosevelt library opened but, twenty years later, most boxes on the shelves were spined-out and others were moved into sleeves and binders. The staff opted to rise to the challenges of reconfiguration rather than turn down the opportunities to bring in an additional hundred—then thousands and tens-of-thousands—of films and television series!

The impression that Scarecrow was an authoritative source for film information was burnished in 2004 when the Scarecrow Video Guide was published. The now out-of-print tome consisted of over eight-hundred pages of film reviews and recommendations written by Scarecrow employees and friends of Scarecrow. Carl and Mickey were also instrumental in getting the collection into a more comprehensive database (entitled Oz). The effects were mostly experienced behind-the-scenes but it allowed customers to search assorted title availabilities at stations installed throughout the store. In 2012, they additionally make the collection searchable on the web. Oz laid the groundwork for Zardoz more than a decade later!

While Scarecrow continued to shine bright amongst lovers of physical media, the world in general was heading in an entirely different direction. The number of streaming services continually increased and viewing habits were rapidly changing. Beginning in 2009, rental revenue began a steady decline. By the end of 2013, Mickey and Carl arrived at the very difficult conclusion that its then-current business model was not the best way to maintain the largest publicly-available video collection. A new approach needed to be found.

At the start of 2014, Carl and Mickey announced to the staff that they were accepting proposals for the stewardship of the Scarecrow collection. They were exclusively interested in considering plans that either involved Scarecrow becoming a nonprofit or being folded into an existing nonprofit. After numerous meetings and careful consideration, Mickey and Carl accepted a proposal from the staff—including (at the time) Kevin Shannon, Kate Barr, Joel Fisher and several others—and the next stage was initiated!

By May of 2014, the nonprofit SV Archive was formed under the working-title of the Scarecrow Project. Months of planning led to the launch of a make-or-break crowdfunding campaign on August 12th, 2014. An ambitious goal of $100,000 was raised within twenty-four hours; thereafter, the nascent nonprofit was able to raise an additional $30,000 before the campaign concluded a month later. This was the seed money for its necessary transition and, in October of 2014, Carl and Mickey generously donated the entire collection to the Scarecrow Project! One year later, Scarecrow officially became a 501(c)(3) and was acknowledged by The Stranger as a Genius (in their annual Genius Awards). By 2016, 4K discs began appearing on the shelves and a few years thereafter, in 2019, Scarecrow was designated by the State of Washington as a cultural museum! Like nearly all institutions throughout the world, Scarecrow temporarily shuttered mid-March of 2020 and creatively reopened a handful of weeks later for reservation-only rentals (safely passed through a side-window). These complications ultimately resulted in the development of a complementary Rent-by-Mail service, allowing access to the collection—Blu-ray and DVD-wise—across the United States.

In the penultimate month of 2024, a new lease—the last—was signed with an expectation that a relocation would become necessary when the term ended. The owners were looking to sell the property to a developer and that would inevitably result in a tear-down of the Roosevelt building. Instead, with the arrival of a new leadership team, an ambitious year-long effort was made to purchase the property! Thanks to the immense support of our extraordinary community, Board and staff, Scarecrow acquired its longtime (and now forever) home at the beginning of 2026! Combined with a resurgent interest in physical media for rental—in-store and by-mail—and the increasing sales of Blu-rays / 4Ks and even used VHS tapes and laserdiscs, Scarecrow has arrived at its most successful period in decades! More members, more events, more titles and more of entirely everything! Scarecrow recently surpassed 155,000 unique items in its collection, representing over 200,000 individual television episodes and films from nearly every country and continent on the planet (and a handful filmed outside the confines of the Earth as well)!

Our ongoing saga continues (and you are an essential part of our next chapter)!

Alicia Betty | Metadata Integrity + Collection Associate
Selena Calacat | Video Librarian
Meghann Crafton | Social Media Manager
Jamie Han | Operations Director
Ari Herman | Video Librarian
Claire Idstrom | Video Librarian
Jas Keimig | Video Librarian
Moth Lisle | Video Librarian
Wil Long | Creative Designer
Matt Lynch | Marketing Manager + VIVA! Physical Media co-host
Jonathan Marlow | Executive Director
Megan McNelis | Video Librarian
Tyler Mesman | Development Director
Malakie Peters | Development Manager
Amy Raridan | Video Librarian
Daniel Roth | Video Librarian
Stan Shields | Programming Director
Emalie Soderback | Video Librarian + VIVA! Physical Media co-host
Sophia Soriano | Video Librarian
Mark Steiner | Senior Buyer
Davis Storts | Video Librarian
Vicky Tamaru | Engagement + Strategic Partnerships Director
Bryan Theiss | Inventory Manager
Jensen Ward | Video Librarian Manager
Emma Welch | Video Librarian

Sean Axmaker | Kate Barr | Brian Blue | Anissa Bower | Marc Burgio | Kevin Clarke | Sara Dickerman | Carl Farrow | Rebecca Fisher | Sam Franklin | Lora Grillo | Lilli Harwood | John Hicks | Norman Hill | Anne Hockens | Tom Hyland | George Latsios | Suzy Marshall | Patrick Mathewes | Mickey McDonough | Paul Merrill | Susan Merrill | Ariana Mull | Wesley Nelson | Meg O’Leary | Marc Palm | Justin Rohmer | Jenn Schmidt | Chris Schneider | Kevin Shannon | Rebecca Soriano | Kristian St. Clair | Tommy Swenson | Carl Tostevin | Michael Kinomoto | Gayle Truax | Efram Turchick | Deb Williams