My first VHS purchase was Shinya Tsukamoto's Testsuo: Iron Man. Because I'm fucked up like that. I would shove my way into showing it to friends, several times over.
My first anime rentals were divided between both a Blockbuster and a "Two Night Rental" place that took a small store space at the end of a shopping plaza; both places had surprsingly large sections with releases from almost every American anime distributor active in the United States during the 90s - my first purchase was from Suncoast, I can't recall exactly what it was now, funnily enough, just that it was from ADV and in one of those big ol' clamshells.
This reminds me of when I worked summers at the Carousel Arcade at the Seaside Heights boardwalk back in the mid to late 90's. Just a bunch of youths and failed-at-life adults screwing around, working a secret mafia money laundering front.
The West Coast Video (it had only recently been bought out from the local chain that opened it) I worked at in '95 was a lot closer to Clerks (say what you want about Kevin Smith, that movie did a very good job of capturing the early to mid 90s small video store employee experience) but I'd go down to the Suncoast at the mall for blaxploitation and Troma tapes sometimes. It was pretty much the same as this.