Posted by walterbell 5 days ago
Of the Burbank, Fountain Valley, San Marcos, San Diego, Anaheim Hills, Roseville, Sacramento, Fremont, Las Vegas and Sunnyvale locations, I think I liked the San Diego one most for selection (it was a former Incredible Universe), but the Roseville and Las Vegas ones had the wildest themes, even more than the Burbank UFO. But the Fremont location when I ended up there in 2019 was deader than a doornail, and it was like waiting for the next hit to kill them. The next hit came sooner than I thought.
I must admit that “Big Boob Babes” was my favorite CD-ROM purchase in 1994. No, it was not a DVD
This morning, I was just watching the video of “The Distance” by Cake, and I vividly recall when that was released and played on my car radio, and the metaphor of corporate slavery was not lost on 24-year-old me.
My favorite store was the one with the Mesoamerican temples and stuff.
Also, remember Weird Stuff Warehouse?
[1] https://www.greenfoothills.org/pga-tour-eyes-frys-course
Exactly that. It was never that it straight-up didn't work. It was just that there was some issue.
I first encountered it with a TV that literally had a dead pixel. From there, the next 3-4 purchases featured something wrong. Monitor's built-in settings menu didn't display, cordless phone speaker issue, etc.
Dead pixels.
No way it was random. Funniest part was they'd get snippy with their return policy, like you were the problem.
Just being able to look at all the various components was a good education.
Iconic building, nostalgic time.
I had a traveling job for a while, I was away from home every single week.
When you first start doing a job like that, you imagine that you'll be doing all kinds of sightseeing. I thought I'd be traipsing through Central Park and eating Cubanos in Miami.
None of that happens IRL; you're so busy working, by the time you have a few hours to kill, all you want to do is space out. Doing tourist stuff gets to be WORK.
After a few months of this, I started to just obsessively spend time at Fry's.
I didn't even really need anything from Fry's. It was just this place I could reliably visit at any tech hub on the west coast. Doesn't matter if you're in Burbank or San Diego or Sacramento or Portland or Seattle: if it's 2010, there's a Fry's you can wander around in for a couple of hours.
I've never been to The Space Needle in Seattle, but I've been to Fry's Electronics numerous times.
Needless to say when I moved to the Bay Area after college graduation, I wasted no time visiting the closest Fry’s Electronics. For me, that was the original Fremont location - the one in an office park off Mission Blvd with the space theme inside. I never see that location mentioned any more. It was closed after Fry’s bought the Incredible Universe stores and they moved the Fremont Fry’s to the IU store on Auto Mall Parkway.
Fry's was like a museum of common and obscure electronic parts, devices and strangely miscellaneous stuff (mundane office supplies, home appliance accessories, etc.). It was definitely the go to place for computer building blocks and related supplies.
It was amazing what could be found there. One really great thing was relay racks and all kinds of shelves and attachments for them. Too good to pass up I bought one. It was used in my office (for webserver and LAN) and still houses my home server.
Like everywhere else Fry's closed unceremoniously. I guess the chain couldn't withstand the growing online competition and waning interest in desktop machines. Too bad they had to go, now and then it would be so convenient if neighborhood purveyors of "exotic" electronics were still around.
Speed up electronics prototyping in support of future manufacturing.
They had one long line that everyone got into, and a load balancer up front that would direct you to an open check stand, and at least at the store I went to, in their hayday they had 30 registers open at once!
Unfortunately, they redesigned the shop a few years ago and got rid of that.
those were indeed the days.
Oh wait, I do remember buying a 20? foot long (several meter) orange crossover ethernet cable! Then I punched a hole thru the drywall in my apartment and connected my two PCs. One of which had dialup internet, so I could access it and my .mp3s from the other. Pre-wifi by about 5-10 years. :-D
I came this close to buying a 15ft tall Queen of Hearts.
reminds me of my mom taking me to radio shack, so many times.
thank you for sharing.
https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/santa-clara.aspx
Well, maybe. It's delayed months at this point.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1h5r409/microcenter...
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7-e_yhEzIw
1: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ghost-boxes-reusing-a...
https://pioneerpublishers.com/old-frys-building-to-see-new-l...
Recycling raw materials is important, but ideally we shouldn't be constructing buildings that are single-tenant, requiring a complete demolition just to make the land have utility again.
They have to be suspicious because customer fraud is as much of a problem as employee fraud, but it still sucks to be accused as the victim.
I had the impression that their return process was very lax so you'd have "customers" returning broken items or worse... And they'd end up on the shelves with the white "returned item" sticker with the discounted price.
Only time I ever considered it was when the returned one was the only one left.