Epistemographer

So, it looks like the return of the automat ain’t gonna happen after all:

WASHINGTON – Residents of the city’s trendy Adams Morgan neighborhood will have to buy their toilet paper, shaving cream and middle-of-the-night sandwiches elsewhere now that McDonald’s has shut its 24-hour streetside vending machine, which the company had heralded as the convenience store of the future.

A tarp covered the minivan-size machine Wednesday, and a sign thanked customers for their business. Only the DVD rental service remained active, charging $2.97 for a three-night rental. McDonald’s was also closing three other area machines. Most were outside McDonald’s restaurants.

The 24-hour kiosks, operating under the name “Redbox,” dispensed a wide variety of convenience foods and groceries, including milk, eggs, bread, detergent, shaving cream, paper towels, bandages and sandwiches.They took credit cards and cash and featured an ATM machine with a 25-cent surcharge.

I interviewed the guy who ran the DVD part of these earlier this year – he’s had a hell of a history in video, running a chain of stores north of San Francisco since the early 1980’s, getting involved with Netflix in its early days, then helping out with the Redbox project. Interestingly, he was championing video rental vending machines in the early 1980’s, and he’s still got one of the prototypes tucked away at one of his stores…

(Woo-hoo! 100th entry! Does this mean I’m ready for syndication yet?)

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