This year’s First Annual Best Local Nostalgia Awards have been chosen by me, Mike Paulus, your trusted source for the best wistful townie opinions in all the Chippewa Valley because everyone says so, and it’s actually pretty undeniable when you think about it. On to the awards.

Best Bygone Video Rental Store: Video Vistas

The winner is obviously Video Vistas. Were you expecting Eye View Video or maybe American Video? If so, stop reading, because I don’t need that kind of misguided energy today. By all accounts (aka the one I could find), Vistas was Eau Claire’s longest running and last independent video store, nestled in Riverside Plaza off Menomonie Street from 1985-ish to 2004-ish, RIP-ish.

They were truly a mom-n-pop operation, the mom and pop being Karen and Don Mattson. They had handmade shelves, with handmade signs organizing everything by custom genres, including categories like “Camp.” They had one VHS copy of each film (maaaaybe two copies of a new release). They had local commercials. They had a dot matrix receipt printer. Don had a fantastic mustache. And they had my heart.

Come Friday night, if they didn’t have a copy of the movie I wanted (aka Goonies), I was forced to expand my horizons vistas and take a chance on something new. Here in 2026, with my many fabulous streaming channels, if I want to take a risk and watch a film I might not like, I need to use, like … the power of my own will or whatever. No thank you very much. I’d rather have Karen and Don’s mustache telling me, “Sorry, Back to the Future is checked out until Monday. Try something else.”

Best Bygone Burgers: Beamer’s

OK, you gotta help me out, here. There’s a Subway in a little, brown building on Eddy Lane near North High School, right? And years ago – before Subway filled the place with highly trained Sandwich Artists – that little, brown building was home to a drive-thru burger place called “Beamer’s Better Burgers” or something. And they served, like, the best cheeseburgers ever made, right?

I’m pretty sure I’m mostly right about most of that. And I’m pretty sure I consider these cheeseburgers the best in the world because back in the early 1990s I’d only had a cheeseburger from, maybe six or seven different restaurants.

Now, I realize that an accredited cheeseburger scientist with a degree from Harvard University would quickly tell me, “Mike, your cheeseburger sample size is very limited. You can’t possibly expect accurate results from such a paltry dataset of tasty ’burgs.”

To which I’d respond, “Stick a cork in your burg-hole, Nerd.” And then I’d go on to explain that Beamer’s was the very first place I’d ever had bacon on my cheeseburger, creating what those of us in the burg-munity call a “bacon cheeseburger.”

To which these Harvard-trained cheeseburger scientists would respond, “Oh damn. That place sounds legit, Homie.”

Best Bygone Episode of Public Access Television: An Episode of the Cow Report I Watched One Time

Locally-made public access television shows used to be a much bigger deal around Eau Claire, which is to say, “we used to have them.” Back when I was in high school, it was relatively easy to flip around your basic cable channels and find low-budget, cringey TV shows made by and starring your very strange neighbors.

One such show was The Cow Report – a local issues, conservative call-in show hosted by a man named Chuck Lee and his elderly sidekick Fred. And yes, people actually called in to talk about local political issues and the city government.

If I remember correctly, most of the show was Chuck making some deadpan joke about the city council followed by awkward silence as Fred rummaged through a bunch of newspapers. Then Chuck would say, “What you think about that Fred?” and Fred would say, “Well, you know how I feel about that.”

People also called in to prank ol’ Chuck and Fred. I remember watching The Cow Report one afternoon during my freshman year of college because that’s how cool I was. Some kid kept calling in, over and over, to talk about the budget audio electronics brand GPX. The kid wouldn’t stop. Chuck and Fred just kept hanging up on the guy, who eventually would just scream “GPX!” into the phone.

Finally, a real caller got through and started talking about the hot topic of the day: a proposed arena project for big sporting events and concerts. He and Chuck and Fred had a nice little conversation about the arena until the caller calmly asked, “So in the arena … do you think they’ll install GPX speakers?”

The caller hung up, and this amounts to the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.

OK, so I only had room for three Best Local Nostalgia Awards. See you in 2027.