Posted by ivewonyoung 3 days ago
Having real places is still awesome. I know the finances don't really scale, but shoutout to Lynnwood GameStop for keeping it real out there.
And RIP RadioShack. You always had a hard drive when we needed one to reinstall windows during a lan party. holds up a glass
Store was great and the young men who worked there were
- polite
- helpful
- persistent in calling HQ store help line to get the card working
I even asked them if there was a way I could give feedback on the store and mention them specifically. They said "Given how the company is doing, that would be great but it won't matter but thank you."
Which prompted another thought:
Retail was a great first job for kids in high school. It taught you customer service, sales, responsibility etc. Barrier to entry was also low in case you came from a lower socioeconomic tier and were looking to gain experience for your resume etc.
Feels like we lost a lot by killing off physical locations on multiple fronts.
Consumers say they lament the loss of brick and mortar stores, yet their actions of only buying online shows that isn't really that big of a loss to them. It's such a weird situation for a retailer. I don't envy their situation.
Not a new phenomenon.
A year later, I wanted to buy a scope as a guide scope, and they had sadly closed. Telescopes are clearly a niche market, and even though it was a proper store the market just wasn't there to sustain the rent. There are plenty of places to go online to get similar advice, but nothing online can replace the experience of having someone right there showing something to you.
Sadly, the longer the internet exists, the less I'm liking it. It is soulless and just sucks the soul out of humanity more than it adds.
Do they still do this?
Makes it very tedious to price-shop.
I will actually go out of my way to search for some suppliers on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, even Tictok before dealing with buying directly, just so I can rule them out if they're gonna pull a "$10 + $60 s&h" trick.
And... Again, this isn't new; pretty sure Ronco was doing this on TV before the Web.
The old "which long distance carrier do you want?" with an "I don't care" response resulted in you receiving the most expensive long distance plan from a company called "I Don't Care".
Just because scams/shaddy practices existed in the days of yore does not make them any more acceptable today.
The ultra rich are, once again, externalizing costs to society (because a run-down mall is a blight that takes down the value of everything around it) while taking and gobbling their profits.
The other alternative is that instead of niche specialty dealerships, you got national or even international chains moving in, that sell cheap-ass clothes from Bangladesh or other sweatshops in masses.
For Halo 3 we had LAN parties in the back of pick-up trucks after rushing down to GameCrazy (Hollywood Video's game store chain which was attached on the side) after middle school in Canyon Park.
Halo Reach was the Lynnwood GameStop after a friend begged his parents to let him stay out late that night.
So many friends and memories. I miss those energetic meet-ups!
I miss Radio Shack, particularly when they were a bit more "component based". As a general electronics store, they were almost always strictly worse than any of the big box stores, but if you needed something like a resistor or individual LEDs, it was great to be able to be able to drive over there and find something. I live in NYC now, and fortunately we still have Micro Center which is still fun, though I do worry that it might go the way of Fry's Electronics soon enough.
I understand it, it's really hard to compete with Amazon in today's environment, and I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store, I buy online too, and fundamentally these are for-profit businesses and I don't feel any obligation to give them charity.
Still, seeing Radio Shack and Fry's dying does make me a little sad. When I first moved to Dallas, one of my favorite things to do on the weekend was go to Fry's, look around the store, and buy a cheap DVD of some anime that I hadn't heard of.
I didn't know this years later, watching Young Sheldon ... that Incredible Universe was Tandy's attempt to get into the consumer electronics when Radio Shack's profit started falling, and that Tandy has a whole (very profitable) leather company. My SCA friends tend to know a lot more about Tandy Leather than they do about Radio Shack.
Fry's Electronics closed here in the west part of Phoenix, several years ago. Their shelves were starting to get bare and were selling things from consignment. It took a while for them to die, and I finally found out why: they were having trouble getting credit to buy inventory.
I was going to do some of my 2019 Christmas shopping at the one and only Fry's in the Chicago area, but I walked inside and it looked like a bomb had gone off. Nothing was organized, lots of empty shelves, the cafe was closed, and I got a serious case of the heebie-jeebies and hightailed it out of there.
Google Street View shows it as it was in August 2019. As far as I know, the building is empty now.
And then there was TigerDirect, but that's a separate rant. I used to have three major computer shops within driving distance, but it's down to one now with MicroCenter.
It's interesting and sad that RadioShack somehow managed to succeed and fail at least twice in computing, first in the 8-bit microcomputer era and second in the Tandy PC era. It seems like they failed in the build-your-own-cheap-PC era as well.
In 2019, I was in San Jose for a business trip, and I was excited that there was a Fry's Electronics within walking distance of my hotel, so after work one day I walked over to it.
It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I went in there, and it was almost completely empty. Very few workers, most of the shelves had absolutely nothing on them, there were barely any workers. The walls that usually had a bunch of TVs were completely bare, they managed to still have a full shelf of PlayStation Classics, and like one little basket of USB cables.
I genuinely thought they might have forgotten to lock the front door after closing, and that I was accidentally trespassing, but nope: there was a person behind the register and I was able to buy a flash drive.
When Fry's died during (not because of) the pandemic, basically half the comments on articles were "oh no, what about Micro Center?" to which the immediate response was invariably "they're all completely packed" (partially due to the pandemic meaning everyone wanted better computer gear for WFH). During the height of the GPU shortage, it was often said that your best chance of getting a GPU was going to the nearest Micro Center. On all of my more recent trips, Micro Center has seemed to do pretty strong business.
Somehow, Micro Center does seem to have found a strong niche that makes it survive as a brick-and-mortar store in an increasingly online store (hell, Micro Center's website is pretty notorious for looking like a 90's webstore). Part of that is probably knowledgeable salespeople (something Fry's was known for lacking). And I think there's also a savvy psychological rationale behind its expansion policy--its stores always come across as just a bit too small, and its locations too few, but the flip side is that you don't have cavernous spaces you need to fill (like Fry's did).
I always check there first when I need some kit. I much rather drive over and get what I need same-day. Routers, adapters, deoxit, solder, PC parts, generic flash drives in bins at the checkout like they're candy.
Their electronics section leaves something to be desired, but where else can I just grab a Pi zero w to-go for 10 bucks or some random sensor I've been meaning to play with to add on to whatever I was already buying. I cant even be mad at the markup because it's so valuable to have same-day.
That and the old-school sticker from the salesmen for commission means they tend to actually be nerds looking to help and I'm always happy to slap the sticker on whatever I'm buying to give them a piece.
If you have a Microcenter in your neighborhood, give them some business. I can only describe the feeling like you're a kid walking into Toys R Us again.
In the end, a helpful discord member was already at the store, purchased a GPU for me, and held it until I could get there and buy it off him. Due to the shortage there was no risk of him stuck holding the "bag" but it was a huge favor from my end. Wasn't scalping but I still threw in an extra $20 just for helping out.
Thank god for Micro Center. Bought a cheap first Gen Threadripper and a board for it, turns out the board needed a firmware update to get the CPU working. Called the Flushing Micro Center, asked if they could help me and They said "Sure thing! bring the CPU and board over, no cooler needed." Dropped it off and they called me back in three hours, board was ready. Amazon can't do that.
I also love spending a bit of time walking the aisles and always stop by the clearance table to scrounge for cheap fun stuff.
It has the added advantage that I can export the order lists as XML, to keep a little bit of an inventory. I think every electronics hobbyist knows how you tend to very quickly forget what components that you have on hand, from the lowest resistor to entire FPGA dev boards.
Hopefully tapping into the gamer & hobbyist markets keeps them afloat.
There are actually five in the metro area: Brooklyn, Queens, NJ, LI, and Yonkers. I live in biking distance of the Brooklyn store and drive past (stop at) the Yonkers one pretty frequently and find they’re both usually quite busy, so hopefully they’ll stick around.
I make a point of trying to buy from them because I value having a place nearby that employs actual purchasing staff so I don’t have to sort through junk and counterfeit products, and because I like having a place where I can deal in person, have things same day, return without shipping etc.
It's kind of a pain in the ass for me to get there from my house by train, and I don't have a car, but I always make a point to visit there when I'm in the area (usually because I need to go to Lowes and/or Harbor Freight).
I agree that it's nice to not have to worry about counterfeits, and it's nice to be able to buy a microcontroller or a Raspberry Pi or something without have to wait for shipping.
I am. :-)
> I buy online too, and fundamentally these are for-profit businesses and I don't feel any obligation to give them charity.
You can also judge people for prioritizing profit over all else.
Even from a purely utilitarian-calculus perspective, it's a bit strange to me when people say "I wish we had X" but then "but I understand people need to make money". Like, if you wish you had X, then X has utility to you. Now, it may be that the amount you would pay for X is less than what was needed for X to survive, but that's not necessarily implied by the mere fact that X has to make money.
And that's leaving out all the other positive and negative utilities that come from these various choices. Like living in a town where you can go to a place and have interactions with people, or even just browse unfamiliar and interesting products, instead of just a big warehouse.
There isn't any reason not to judge people for doing things that you think make the world worse.
I didn't mind paying a bit more for stuff at Fry's because it was directly available and I liked walking around the store, but I certainly had no plans of buying a product I wasn't already going to buy just to patronize Fry's. These stores, while I do like them, are not charities. I don't want to needlessly give them money for stuff if I don't want it. I am not going to directly donate to them either.
I agree that the experience does have some amount of value if I am reminiscing about these things, but fundamentally what gives me (and I suspect most people) the most value is simply lower prices, and I think these things are at odds.
Big fun stores like Fry's have overhead, and they have to pay for that overhead somehow, meaning that it is rolled into the prices. Amazon is more boring, leading to lower prices.
It's easy to say something like "there's more to life than prices!!!!!" when you're a yuppie software person on Hacker News making six figures with full benefits, but a large percentage (most?) of the population isn't as fortunate. Something being five percent cheaper can be a meaningful difference to those people, and I certainly cannot blame someone in that situation for prioritizing their finances over some nebulous completely undefined and arbitrary "greater good" that you seem to be hinting at.
Now, I am one of those software people who (generally) makes plenty of money, so you could reasonably judge me for shopping on Amazon and focusing primarily on prices. I don't know what to tell you; even if I make plenty of money, it's not infinite money, I still have to prioritize how it's spent, and again I just don't feel the need to try and optimize for some undefined greater good.
What I'm talking about is at least slightly less nebulous than what you describe. My claim is something like "The more that people buy from Amazon today, the lower the expected quality of your own life in 25 years." It's similar to other negative externalities like climate change. I'm not saying someone is satan incarnate for driving their gas car to work. But the less they realize that there are problems with that and the less they take action where possible to mitigate them, the more dubious I'll be about them.
(Incidentally, I'm not "one of those software people who makes plenty of money". I make in the mid five figures with no benefits, so I'm not arguing from quite as privileged a perspective as the one you mention. But my position is still more privileged than many, many other people who can't order from Amazon at all because, for instance, they have no credit card or fixed address. And those people are also harmed by the growth of Amazon as it gradually reduces their options for buying things in person.)
Given Amazon's labor practices, maybe you should be.
Union busting? Piss bottles? Intrusive tracking with zero tolerance for shortfalls? Poor safety? Low pay?
That's rampant everywhere.
There are exceptions, but they make the rule and the exceptions only apply to direct employees so you have to dig, take time, do research, verify certifications/audits, spend more money, and wait longer, to truly avoid abusive companies.
Shopping at unionized Costco doesn't count for shit. That gallon of ketchup you bought was made by someone pissing in a bottle on a dangerous production line.
Please note: I'm not saying it's right. It is not right.
What I'm saying is that people SEEM to be saying "Amazon sucks brah <they clap their hands together like they're knocking dust off> I don't use 'em" and then they're shopping at Target, where the distribution centers and stores are filled with poorly-paid workers pissing in bottles in between safety stand downs because an unsupervised and poorly-trained worker died crushed between a manlift and a wall: https://www.sungazette.com/uncategorized/2024/11/muncy-targe...
If anyone wants to compete in the smug olympics, I'm the unholy lovechild of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps when it comes to only buying union-made/public benefit corporation/domestic/local products.
Simultaneously, I recognize that not everyone makes as much as I do so Walmart or Amazon may be their only option.
[Citation needed]
We can care about both things.
How many people working in China would find it a dream to work in an Amazon warehouse? I know about Amazon practices second hand from my step son who has both worked in an Amazon warehouse and as a driver.
There have been plenty of stories about small towns having labor shortages and having to increase wages to compete against Amazon warehouse pay because people would rather work there than at a fast food store, daycare, etc.
That's where you didn't share the concern.
Amazon is just one of the nails in the coffin, and if it didn't exist there are still 50 others holding it shut.
We've seen most retail stores fail to convert from a physical to mixed physical+online format.
The number of items a successful electronics store needs is huge. The small mall format wasn't going to work.
For a while, people were sure Barnes and Noble was doomed, but recently they've done a big turnaround, even opening new stores. Anecdotally, the ones I've been to in recent years do seem nicer and more attractive than previously. Maybe there's a lesson in how they were able to stay alive.
It helps that books have become Veblen lifestyle collectibles for (mostly) younger women, and there are entire subcultures on social media dedicated to promoting the lifestyle.
"It was the place to go if you needed..." sounds a lot better than, "It was often the only game in town, and woeful at that," I guess. I still remember them trying to sell Monster cables for amounts of money that were downright comical.
The manager not only didn't kick me out (like the manager of the bookstore always did if I looked at a book for more than five minutes), he'd come over and teach me some things when he wasn't busy.
I also loved that I knew exactly where to go to get an aux cable, or any other random component I might need.
It was always nice to visit back home (including this year) and see that this store was still around. It will certainly be missed :(
I second this sentiment. It is sorta bizarre, there is not really a tech scene in the area except for a few niche roles in support of Pax River Naval Base (I'm also operating my SaaS down here https://weatherthetrip.com/download :peace_sign:). I remember visiting this store back in the 2000's and was surprised when I saw it still in business a few months back.
When I was young I would go to the electronics store and give them a whole list of components I needed for a project. 2 resistors of 5 cents each, some capacitors, etc. The guys would spend 20 minutes scurrying up all the stuff, coming back to say they didn't have 220 ohm, would 2x 100 ohm do? Stuff like that. They spend half an hour on me for a total bill of 10 bucks. I don't know how that was sustainable then but it sure as hell isn't now.
Now I just buy components in bulk. Need a resistor? I just buy 100 of them. Though I don't really tend to use individual components so much anymore. ESP modules can replace a lot and they cost peanuts. If I need something complex I just design a PCB and send it to a PCB manufacturer in China and get 10 of them.
We still have an independent shop like this here in my city in Spain but another one closed up shop during the pandemic. I don't know how long this one will continue. It's a pain. But on the other hand they often don't have what I need so I tend to order online a lot too. But for tools it's nice to look at them in real life before buying them, or to be able to go there if I need something right now.
That was my start. Went on to consume as much info as I could; lots of it from BYTE magazine, took all the programming classes I was allowed in my final 2 years of high school, continued to get a CS degree, and have been programming ever since.
But RS was the genesis.
It was barely a shell of its former self then.. the only training I remember was being told to upsell batteries with every transaction..
I didn't make it long enough to be trained on selling cell phone plans which was the only way to make commission...
I don't understand the mindset of someone willing to be sold a cellphone plan during a random radioshack visit enough to work with them =p
Black Friday was during my short time there, I wasnt overly familiar with our inventory or locations of things, and fielding questions like "What gift should I get my grandson?"
I was anxious pretty much every minute that I worked there. May I never experience retail again.
Theoretically it could add up to a passable paycheck for retail, but they had it set up so that only a few senior staff ever got enough hours/good shifts where you could conceivably hit the addon percentages needed to qualify for commissions. So the only way to make any money was to sell cell plans, phones, and accessories. The whole store was totally focused on hawking cell plans.
Then we had to go to monthly meetings an hour out of town on our own dime. That's where they talked at us about the company and how cool and great it was. Such a shitty place to work. IIRC there was a dedicated web forum called "RadioShackSucks" or something like that where staff complained to each other.
"Well, couldn't find the game. So just the system?"
"Umm...no. I'll just buy the system down the street, since I'm going to have to go there to buy a game anyhow."
I have great memories of buying electronic components, kits to work on with my grandfather, and such. They were pretty sad by the end though. No decent kits, no little drawers of components.
Fond memories rifling through HSC back in my Cisco days :(
American Science and Surplus .. I think … still exists in Chicago.