The oldest retail store on Cedar Springs Road gets a facelift, a new name

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

TapeLenders hasn’t rented tapes in years, but the name was legendary. Located on Cedar Springs Road for 42 years, the store has long been due for remodeling, so owner Chris Lynch decided to rebrand as well.

Lynch bought TapeLenders from Dave Richardson and Todd Seaton in August 2009. Tapes were already in decline, but DVDs and Blueray discs were popular. But, Lynch said, “By 2013, 2014, rentals were being phased out, and by 2015, we were selling off the library.”

That took until 2018, and there hasn’t been a tape or video in the store since.

But rename the store? Every time he mentioned it to customers, there was pushback. The name, that’s been on Cedar Springs for more than 40 years, was iconic. But the name was becoming problematic: New customers would come in the store and ask where the tapes were.

“TapeLenders — where we don’t have tapes nor do we lend anything,” Lynch joked.

TapeLenders in Austin, which Lynch bought from Seaton and Richardson in 2010, had thrived after being renamed Package, and Dallas customers have been objecting to the change less in recent years, the owner said. So now, Package Dallas will make its debut.

The store will continue to carry the Addicted and ES Collection brands, as well as fetish leather gear including the Mr. S brand. Lynch described the selection as “curated branding” of five or six lines in the store. But physically, “We’re giving the store a full facelift,” Lynch said. “The store will have a new look and feel.”

Construction is mostly completed with some wasted space opened to the retail floor. Carpeting has been removed to give the space a more industrial look. Walls are painted a little darker, which works better with dramatic new lighting and fixtures.

The store closed for a few days while the floors were being worked on, but most of the rest of the remodel is being done overnight.

The history
Steve Freeman and Ricky Stilwell opened TapeLenders in 1981 a few doors down the street from where it now stands. The store started out renting Beta tapes, and Dallas and Kansas City were the only two markets in the U.S. where Beta outsold VHS for the first few years the formats competed. Beta was the better technology that was generally used by TV stations, but VHS players were cheaper.

So within a year, TapeLenders began stocking both formats — Beta tapes on one side of the store and VHS videos on the other.

While VHS machines were cheaper than Beta, both were expensive through the 1980s. And when machines broke, people stopped renting. So Freeman found a couple who knew how to repair the video players, built them a repair shop in the back of the store with a window facing the sales floor and put Omni Video Repair in business.

Business boomed, with their “We Repair Beta” sign bringing in customers who wouldn’t have normally shopped on Cedar Springs Road. Then Beta died, and the price of VHS came down by hundreds of dollars and became a disposable commodity. At the same time, AIDS was devastating businesses along Cedar Springs Road. Stilwell was one of the early casualties along the retail strip, but Freeman kept TapeLenders going along with his new partner, Dave Richardson.

When the owner of the flower shop next door to TapeLenders passed away, Freeman asked the landlord about taking over that space. But the landlord, more homophobic than AIDSphobic, declined, even though he had good history with TapeLenders, including their upgrade of the property and rental payment history.

The landlord made it clear he didn’t want any more gay-owned businesses in his properties, telling Freeman, “I found two lovely women” to take over the flower shop.

The two women were, unbeknownst to the landlord, a “lovely” lesbian couple.

When an arson fire destroyed the AIDS Resource Center, The Round-Up Saloon and Union Jack clothing store in 1989, TapeLenders suffered considerable smoke and water damage. Still, the store was beloved by its customers, and it persevered. Customers, who came out to see the damage on

The Strip saw Freeman and Richardson mopping and sweeping and dusting ashes off every tape box in their store, and the customers stepped in to help clean up the mess.

Within a few days TapeLenders was back open for business.

While Blockbuster, a few blocks away on Lemmon Avenue, rented versions of films that were edited to family-friendly PG, TapeLenders remained wildly popular by specializing in the original, uncensored versions of films. TapeLenders regularly outsold Blockbuster, something that just didn’t happen to the retail giant.

Freeman was a serial entrepreneur, opening a travel agency called The Reservation Desk, located in a house on Fairmount Street at Oak Lawn Avenue where an Exxon station now stands. The Reservation Desk begat The Limousine Desk.

Then he branched out with another retail store called Jungle Red in the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City, which also housed a gay disco with rooms that were half motel/half bathhouse. Freeman and Richardson operated Jungle Red as a card and gift store similar to Off The Street or An Occasional Piece, two other Cedar Springs icons, for about a year before selling it to local retailers.

He also sold The Reservation Desk and closed his limo business before he died of AIDS complications in the early 1990s. Richardson continued to run TapeLenders, along with his new partner Todd Seaton.

With Seaton, Richardson opened Outlines on Cedar Springs Road in the mid ’90s as well as a second TapeLenders — this one on the UT campus in Austin, on the first floor of a high-rise dorm facing Guadalupe Street. After a few years, he moved the store close to Oil Can Harry’s, Austin’s busiest gay bar at the time.

In Dallas, Richardson and Seaton added a third Cedar Springs store — Skivvies.

Richardson planned to retire, so they sold OutLines and later TapeLenders. Seaton continues to run Skivvies, but in 2010 he sold Austin TapeLenders to Lynch.

As VHS gave way to DVD, the store adapted — just as it had when Beta died. But since retail has been a big part of the TapeLenders mix since the early ’90s. In fact, when Gov. Ann Richards lost her re-election bid, TapeLenders made up T-shirts and mugs that read “I Miss Ann Already.” They sold out the first morning and a second batch was picked up by Richards’ staff.

Retail remained strong under the new owners — so strong that the Addicted and ES Collection department became its own store. When DVDs gave way to streaming and rentals disappeared from the store, retail grew. But the TapeLenders name lingered — until now.

Plans call for the remodel and rebranding to be complete by the middle of May. The new sign should already be up.

“The difficult stuff is done,” Lynch said, adding that he’s shooting for a grand re-opening celebration over Pride weekend during the beginning of June.