MicroCenter is actually doing pretty well. The location near me almost always has a full parking lot. Probably because they innovated with their product selection and their large focus on PC components.
As an arcade tech, I'm super grateful Micro still exists even with their weird and diverse product selection. Some of the games I work on still use VGA or serial connections and communications, and when I have a game go down, I need it back up ASAP. Being able to send someone to dip over there and buy the cable/connector/component we need, or have them pick it up on their way in to work instead of waiting and having a machine offline for 2-5 days for shipping is a godsend.
Actually, I'd say that's not a bad idea when you think about it. One example would be movie theaters. With the way things are going these days, they may not eventually be around, so having documented footage of theater interiors will be the stories you can pass on and say how we would all go and watch shows on a 40 foot screen. I'm 38 and when the time comes when I eventually have grandkids, I'll bet they'll look at me and say, "You actually carried around phones?"
@@trekzilladmc A tram and bus company had the habit to photograph the places where works on bus stop and tram line were done, for documentation and liability protection. They stored all the photos, some going back to the horse drawn carriages. So places that were completely destroyed and old bus and trams were accidentally photographed and nowadays those technical photos become a really interesting time capsule
Makes me wish I had risked getting escorted out to get pictures of these. You never think at the time that something like that would have value years later.
@@retrolinkx I'm sure that the store owners have a photo. I remember that there was this club in Montreal, on the north shore, by the river. It had a large territory, a large parking lot. I think everybody knew about it. It was called the Octogon. I was too young to go but I did bike by it often. There is a bike trail going by it. It was destroyed maybe 20 y ago and they built apartments. There are maybe 5 photos of it online. The Octogon appeared in a movie called Cruising Bar.
8:20 Nailed it! This is why so many shopping malls are dying, if your not interested in shopping for clothes or jewellery there just isn't much to see or do at these places anymore. A few malls could be saved by introducing new vendors that appeal to different interests, but the rent for retail space in most malls is cost prohibitive for most small businesses. This is why you will rarely if ever see a comic book store, hobby shop, yarn shop, art supply store, etc etc in a mall.
This is also why nowadays you typically find more of a variety of stores, that have nothing to do with clothing and jewellery in the strip mall complexes across the street. Since the rent there is probably a little more cheaper, then in the actual mall building.
There’s a mall down the hill from me that I’ve been revising for around 30 years. There used to be used cd stores, independent video game stores, Arcades, electronic stores all sorts of stuff. I went there a few months ago and other than a pretty good comic book store it’s all just clothing and jewelry stores and phone repair shops and The food court sucks. Hardly anyone there it’s almost spooky.
@@206beastman Idk it's still something different when you can hold that thing you want to buy in your hand and like actually look at it, its build quality etc.
that would be nice. and maybe have it in an old mall. then have all the fastfood chains in there be looking like 80's and 90's interior design. with some tv screens playing 80's and 90's shows and NBA stuff. that would be a blast from the past
It’s worth noting that KB Toys, Toys R Us, and even Sears died due to Wall Street pillaging them. It isn’t like kids stopped wanting toys. They decided that it was better to squeeze a retail chain until it was dead so they could make a little more money rather than try to run a store where people want to come and has things they want to buy.
That is what the Investment Management Corporations like Black Rock, State Street, and others are doing today, that is why prices are so high on everything, and I mean everything!
That makes no sense. They made a little more money for a few years, and then the businesses were gone forever? No one in their right mind kills a golden goose. Most of those retailers failed due to their own problems, mainly high prices compared to online retail.
Microcenter seems to be the only electronics retailer with staying power now, as long as you live near one, you have the option to visit it, or deal with them online. The one near where i used to live was always a lifesaver if I needed something pronto. Frys was my go to place about 10 years ago and it's sad to see their demise. I think the last time I was at my local location, their stock was severely depleted and their "soup to nuts" stock was getting a tad bit ridiculous. Despite their shortcomings prior to their demise, it was one of those geeky lifesavers if you needed something immediately. Thanks for the trip in the wayback machine!
One time I went there and they had multiple isles of cases of bottled water. Also noticed a lot of cheap luggage. they had to be losing a boat load of money keeping the stores open as long as they did.
The thing I miss about classic Radio Shack was the small parts section. They used to carry almost every wire, cable, adapter, switch, capacitor, led, etc. that a person would need to build electronic devices. It was the place to go for kids to get the stuff they needed for things like Science Fairs.
Here in the UK our version was called Tandy, a company that sold mostly Radio Shack branded prodcuts and you could buy individual things like RF connectors, there was a gap for a few years after they went under until Ebay became the main place to buy from, well Ebay was around and you could buy cables but rather than 50p for a connector you needed the entire cable which inc postage may of been £3-£5, wasn't until years later that buying a few connectors/wires in buik worked out literal pennies.
Agreed, used to be able to go there and get the component you needed to fix something. That went away years before they closed. I remember going there looking for parts and leaving disgusted because they didn't have anything even remotely close. And the staff there used to be knowledgeable in nearly everything electronic, but that went the way of the dodo too.
In Houston (better than Dallas all day every day) we had EPO - Electronic Parts Outlet - where you could buy new components and older assemblies - Did I mention WAY better than Far Southern Oklahoma (Dallas).
In Texas at least, Altex is the 80's Radio Shack of today, with all those things you mentioned, on a lot more floor space (but still small compared to Fry's, for example). Friendly, non-pushy staff, too.
Amazon is like getting everything you ever wished for as a young nerd but finding out that it has robbed you of the sense of wonder that shopping in a store had in the 80's.
Amazon and Ebay has pros and cons, lots of fun stuff, some good prices, lots of scams and house shenanigans, magical $100 rebuy taxes for the too lazy to check being one obvious one, and Ebay seems to game its users to promote blood in the water feeding frenzy. Ebay is not an honest auction site.
Computer Shopper. Large, paper version of Google for computer parts in the 90s. How I wish I would have kept a few of those - for the luls today if nothing else!
That's honestly the bet way to describe Online shopping seemed new and magical at first until we started realizing how it was slowly eroding the in-person shopping experience outside of basic department store goods out of existence.
This really took me back. I loved Fry's electronics. I used to get all my computer parts there for my personal builds. We still have Microcenter in Richardson, which is actually where I bought my last gaming computer and a few upgrade pieces. I'm glad we have at least one store left where I can just go and be a nerd- but it's always PACKED. Makes me think they could use another electronics store.
My Xmas radio shack catalog was given to me with a lot of the pages torn out and some pages with chunks torn out. I was later told my parents had not wanted to disappoint me. Parents, duh.
I do love supporting local record stores. I'm surprised vinyl is romanticized enough for it to suddenly be profitable again. It seems like the music loving crowd is pretty fed up with online stuff and DRM, and buying CDs or even cheap casettes remains a reliable way to just reliably have access to music. It is a magical experience to browse through these record stores that have their own personality and have managed to stay afloat despite everything.
And the television as in the medium not the device is becoming gobbed up by the Internet as well recently. I just have less and less incentive to watch actual any television on my TV every day (it's more like a large monitor now), and I definitely am not the only one, at least in Poland. They just play reruns of reruns of old shows with bad dubbing that I can find in better quality online and have seen already or don't want to, films that are either boring enough to never watch them or I already have them on DVD, again with bad dubbing, and stupid reality shows that I have no idea at all who in the right mind might be watching so many of (and that's even on Discovery Channel: "Some guys looking for gold", "some guys looking for crabs" , "some guys looking for meteorites", "some guys auctioning garbage", "some guys driving a truck". That's really so much fun, ha ha. And takes up most of their schedule, and the rest is popular science programs that are >5 years old and I've seen them like 3 times, air in uncomfortable time slots, and aren't really up to date anymore). THAT's why I don't want a VCR anymore, or any more modern method of TV recording. I miss the days that there was anything worth recording, or even something remotely worth wearing out my eyeballs on the TV, and that is probably never coming back as well.
@@krzysztofczarnecki8238 Back in 2008 as a cost cutting measure when I moved across the country I got rid of my TV and when I got to my new place I never got cable. Its been over 10 years now that TV has not been a part of my life and I don't miss it at all.
@@whaaaa869 No. Because in the 90's the shelves were full, every store was occupied, people could afford to go out and buy things with their higher disposable income. Now it's all FUCKED. Empty stores everywhere, entire shelves void of items in 90% of stores and people can barely afford those few remaining items anyways. Cheers.
@@TheVanillatech half right. I was a teen in the 80s, so I was also a 90s adult. Overall, shops and restaurants in malls still had a high turnover, its just that they'd get replaced quicker. The individual stores, however, were being killed by Walmart and Target and "big box" and "warehouse" stores. Sears tried to join in with "low everyday prices" by eliminating sales, which did make prices cheaper, overall. But the loyal Sears customers were brought in by "sales-driven" marketing, and people who were looking for low prices but not sales had already become loyal to those newer stores, so it was a disaster, Sears soon went back to sales. Don't forget the growing influence of internet sales and "Cyber Monday". These weren't damaging brick and mortar's until the late 90s , but everyone was paying attention and buying by 1999. But the malls in the communities surrounding Worcester, in the 90s, for example, had already totally devastated downtown Worcester. There was no need to pay for, or struggle to find, a parking space, people stopped going downtown. Even the porn theater went out of business. I traveled across the country a few times when re-locating, among other reasons, I know what you're talking about. What bothers me is that you're pretending to be an authority on the subject and putting your problems either typifying every place as all the same, or your issues as the worst. They aren't.
@@TheVanillatech It is much more soul crushing today because of architecture as well. I am not kidding, the way buildings look will drive your soul down as well, attract gangs and it is done on purpose. The beauty of how buildings look has the same psychological effect as a well landscaped area vs a run down unfriendly area does. If you look at every fast food joint today, none have a roof, they all have a simple straight up pattern, no imagination city block buildings as to up until 2010 they all had a roof, looked comfy to go in, welcoming village type building.
@@DMalenfant1 Of course it's done on purpose. The beautiful and highly diverse architecture of the last 300 years and numbers of "movements" were created by highly trained, highly paid master tradesmen (which don't exist in that regard anymore) and designed and paid for by a plethora of individual construction gangs employed by a plethora of individual entities. Money was abdundant, profit was not the be all and end all, sometimes it wasn't even an issue. Today you have a handful of massive construction conglomerates in a world where 1% of the population own 75% of the land and wealth. Things are done as cheaply as possible, using inferior resources and employing inferior, lower paid tradesmen and the projects are not under supervision of artistic / creative architects (unless its a house in Aspen, of course). The new buildings here in the UK, both residental and commercial, have for decades ignored the thousand year history back catalogue of national and international designs that we have aquired and that can been seen up and down the Country in the old town areas, infavour of the Wallmart / Modular style of bang it up fast and cheap and sell it high. These new houses look terrible and offer a scientifically pre-calculated amount of living space as to be JUST ACCEPTABLE to the average pleb.
Seeing the empty Fry’s shelves unexpectedly made me teary eyed. I remember going there with my dad. He taught himself computers in the late 80s and taught me at age 7. I thought we were playing, little did I know he was laying foundation for my future. He would commute to Los Angeles for work; and sometime in the 90s he told about this super big computer store with random decorations. We went to Fry’s and I was blown away. Dad got me some stuff and later on in college I took my roomates to the same store.
Yeah, that was common practice. And there was nothing the security guards were able to do about it. "What are you writing, sir?" "Just making a shopping list."
When I worked at a petrol station at a supermarket in 1994, I had to jump in one of their company cars and drive around writing down the prices of competitor stations.
@@EgoShredder I did that thing with gasoline pumps too, not with the prices though but with the amount of fuel sold as indicated in that very inconspicuous analog counter ( to know if competing with them is sustainable)
What a legend. This man is all about tech and makes great videos. Has great history. Actually learns to fix items. And he was trolling block buster and filming it for us to laugh at today. 👍
If I were Amazon, I would have bought all the Fry's locations and turned them into a Warehouse/Amazon shopping center where you could either have your items shipped there or pick it up from there or even just shop the items they have in stock there. It sounds counter-intuitive considering Amazon was one of the reasons Fry's is done and dusted but if they threw in the tech from their fancy grocery stores where you just pick whatever you want and the cameras and computer systems will automatically charge you, they'd cut down on human personel and help prevent porch pirates since people could just come and pick up their items there. Also, instant returns and refunds. The Fry's buildings are so large, they could even fit a small grocery section if they wanted to.
In reality, we don't like people recording and taking pictures because we don't want evidence of everything we are doing wrong to get back to corporate
what you said about the culture is spot on. I miss this time more than anything and it absolutely sucks we can't get it back. I miss hanging out at the mall, checking out all the cool new stuff in stores. being able to see everything and inspect the quality in person is still important. thank god for microcenter!
You nailed it. Especially for me the part about seeing the product in person. There're so many products that look great in a tiny thumbnail and when it arrives, its disappointing junk. Its a frustrating experience.
I grew up in the UK in the 80’s and most towns didn’t have US type malls. You often had what was known as a shopping precinct, which was a much smaller affair. Where I lived we had electrical stores like Dixon’s and Curry’s (which are now merged with PC world) and music shops like Our Price and HMV. Where I lived the electrical stores only really sold the hardware. The games were mostly sold through newsagents like WH Smith and John Menzies. You could also buy games and a limited range of hardware at Woolworth’s, who also sold music and videos. It wasn’t until the 90’s that we got dedicated gaming stores like EB, Game etc etc. Now we also have a proliferation of US style malls.
@Eugene Cam When I was growing up in the 1990s, corporate execs were "millionaires" (except for Bill Gates et al); corporations were valued in the low billions; corporate debt was low, and manageable. Our country's debt was bordering to a trillion (give or take depending on the year. Then I became of age when the Financial Crisis hit; and execs were billionaires, companies would become trillions in market cap and our debt was in the upper trillions. In fact "small businesses" owners tend to have millions on paper. But one thing that people don't talk enough is what got America (us) here. After the dot-com bust; we were running on low interest rates; this is what helped Amazon and Apple and the others get to those trillions on market cap. If we didn't learn how Japan declined in the late 80s, I don't know what other example to point out. Low interest rates is inherently a bad idea; and asking for trouble. I love to go to the malls where I live just on the NH side of Boston metro, retail ain't dead. Many still go to bricks. I think it depends by market. And the retailers should tap into what market works best, and how to improve the remaining customer base. I think that would be a positive place to start.
Too many off brands, that were too expensive! It was like you had to be privileged to buy form some of these stores! That said, I still do miss having one. That’s why I try to support Best Buy & GameStop as much as I can, I also like to see the product that I’m going to buy in action, and I hate paying and waiting for something to be shipped (Especially when don’t know exactly what I’m getting!).
@@MarkMcDaniel I miss it too, but not for going into malls. Malls suck now just as much as they sucked then. The arcade being an exception, and being able to smoke in doors. Playing outside and getting into trouble with your friends beat going to the mall where you had to park, walk, stand in line, try stuff on, walk forever to get anywhere, nah as soon as I scoped out the computer stores in my city (and ended up working for one under the table) I rode my bike around to them and spent my money and time among like minded people. Malls hold absolutely no allure to me - only reason I went to one routinely was because my postal outlet was in one. Don't miss malls much - maybe screwing around with my friends, but even then as soon as I got a car at 17, I almost never returned to the INSIDE of a mall - the parking lot was used extensively in the winter for drifting and making my own autocross course and spending good portions of cold winter evenings getting my Hyundai (yes, a RWD one) going sideways. Sometimes friends would join. Those are my memories of malls. Oh and making out with co-workers in the back of the food storage of the restaurant (even though I didn't work there ;) )
The nostalgia is strong with this one. Scrolling through ebay or amazon ads will never compare with spending a day wandering through the mall from electronics shop to music store. Great video, Dave.
Faaaaaaacts. I always had a specific mall route that started at EB/Kaybee/Babbages/whatever game store was in the mall, then Walden's, then Musicland/SamGoody, before I'd inevitably stop in Radio Shack on my way to the arcade FUN Family Amusement Center.
@@stoneofverbosity Yeah, virtual interfacing might be disappointing as a replacement for commonplace experiences. But when we use the same technology to allow us to simulate picking up and looking at rocks from planets in other galaxies, it becomes inspiring and wonderful. Products being sold online needing to have good ways for users to interface with and analyze them will put money into the development of the same technology that could expand our experience to places it has never been before
Just watched the video and your final statement rings so true. I'm 41 years old and I am always saying that I MISS the shopping experience. I used to love to wander all the stores looking at the newest games, electronics, gadgets, and computers. It's so depressing now and not fun to shop anymore.
I am 53, so I grew up through the 70's, 80's and 90's. Watching this video brought back so many memories. I remember one epic shopping trip I did right after I graduated college, moved out and got my own place in the early 90's. Going into Sears to buy brand-new 486DX2-66 MHz machine, then going into Babbages and getting a SoundBlaster 16 ASP, CD-rom drive, and another 4 Megs of RAM (Yes, Babbages, also sold computer components in addition to the consoles and games), as well as a couple of games, going into Montgomery Wards to get the monitor, and then hitting up the Musicland to buy a couple of albums. Oh yeah, I also bought a 22-inch Zenith TV and a SNES (both of which I still have) and a couple of games for that as well. Must've dropped nearly $5,000 (in 1993 dollars) on that trip and all in the same shopping mall (I guess what happens when you are a young 22 year-old at the time that just landed a nearly 6-digit income job as a software engineer and need to outfit a new apartment)! Could not do that anymore today at the mall as all of those places are now gone (yes, even the Sears and Montgomery Wards)! Along the same lines, anybody remember when Computer Shopper used to be this massive phone-book size tome of a magazine? It was my go-to if I needed something that I could not find locally for computer hardware and parts. Also, anybody remember the computer shows/fairs as well? Since there was no Fry's Electronics in my area (I am on the east coast), those computer shows were the place to go to find just damn near anything you needed when it came to computer hardware, and there was usually one somewhere in the general Washington, D.C. area nearly every weekend. Do they even have those anymore? With that, there is still a Micro Center up in Fairfax, which is not too terribly far from my place. I did live a couple years in Columbus, OH and do remember going into that big one they have there many times.
From the 1950s to the late 1990s was better times, and the further back you go to the 1950s, the better off America was, the more innovated people were, and the more freedom we had!
You remember Radio Shack of the 80s as a place to buy electronics products (clocks, computers, calculators). I remember Radio Shack of the 60s as a place to buy parts for your actual radio shack (resistors, capacitors, vacuum tubes!). Think about that! P.S. Circuit City was founded in 1949!
Even in the 90s when I was a kid you could still buy parts and tools there. At the end they were nothing more than a glorified cell phone store. The only other place we had locally was a one off store that sold electronic components and related tools. It was awesome, the store inside was a huge mess but if you needed a capacitor, mosfet, wire, etc they had it. Unfortunately the place burnt to the ground and never reopened.
Built my first 11 meter amp with components purchased at RadioShack. The only thing I had to order was some toroids for matching transformers. They were the only electronic supply store that kept Teflon coated wire in stock. Sandman 10/7...
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. We came up in a golden era that I sorely miss. Especially Fry’s Electronics of the 80’s and 90’s. By the late 2000’s, Fry’s had been ruined by mismanagement.
I hadn't been to a mall in decades and everything you said is spot on. I decided to go to Fry's last year to see if they had any power supplies and it genuinely creeped me out how the place looked compared to the last time I was in it. The electronics section was only partially lit and mostly in the dark with empty shelves and a few sections of things here and there. The place was dilapidated and is probably torn down now. It made me sad and I couldn't stay in there very long.
You haven't missed much, I have ventured into a mall a handful of times in the last decade, and it's always the same - the requisite few big chain home goods/clothing stores, smattering of specialty stores, Sharper Image, Gamestop and a shitload of dodgy kiosks.
I'm only 26 but man, this hit hard. I went to a big mall recently, and it's exactly like you said. Nothing but clothing stores, ugh... I wish I was able to experience the golden age of nerd shopping.
I'm 31, and my childhood mall is in it's death throws. They annouced they can't pay the mortgage after this year. The only store that consistantly has people in it is the mall ninja store - incense, swords, throwing kives, and in the back, MTG gaming. Seeing the empty sears building hurts, I spent a lot of time there as a kid. Even the empty storefronts from Holilster, A&F, and American Eagle, which I went to as a teen, are empty shells, devoid of product but filled with memories.
Man, I feel that. There's a mall near me I used to go to, almost all the stores are now gone. Literally all that's left now are a few clothing stores, one department store and a Hobby Lobby. You can still see Radio Shack's name vaguely. As nice as online shopping is, you'll never replace the charm of walking around stores to see what's new IMO.
"... empty shells, devoid of product but filled with memories.". -- That makes for a great quote & summarizes all our feelings. My best times browsing stores for technology were in the 1980's & 1990's. Radio Shack, Blockbuster, Sears, Incredible Universe & the final nail, Fry's. All gone. I did take a couple photos inside the local Radio Shack during liquidation in mid 2017. Bought lots of stuff at 40 to 90% off before saying goodbye.
Another aspect of this is what's called showrooming - someone will go into a brick and mortar store, tie up a sales person to help them figure out what they want, and then they go buy it online.
I remember reading an article in the mid-80's in an Air Force information technology magazine that said that the average "blue-two admin troop" (that would be low-level secretary/receptionist for you civilian types) had more computing power on their desk than NASA had when we put a man on the moon. Thirty-odd years later, it think it's safe to say that your average fifth-grader has more computing power in their pocket than NASA had when we put a man on the moon.
"This town sucks, all there is to do is hang out at the mall.." I'd always say as a teen.. Now the kids don't even have that. On the bright side, no more mall cops to deal with.
Speaking of mall cops, if anyone saw that video a few years back of a cop making a kid do push ups instead of taking them in(I forget what for exactly) that was actually outside of the theatre attached to the Six Flags Mall. It is now a boring ass warehouse and it hurts my soul every time I drive by it.
Ikr in my home town growing up adults would complain about the youth hanging out at the park then we got a game crazy and vandalism went waaaaaaaaaaay down and then the adults botched about the owner having a psudo internet Cafe we'd play cs condition zero at his shop, after he lost out to gamestop which was his fault we eventually found planet 8 ball and then kids in town had a place to go again until adults wound up getting mad that we would hang out in broad daylight on 3rd street so 8 ball got closed and everyone was old enough to buy heroin. 2/3 of my graduating class of 30 are addicts or recovering. Shit always broke my heart, one of my friends who fell prey to drugs once thier mom was completely fed up with thier computer usage. The dude was so fucking talented and I learned so much from him it sucks seeing how the drug affected his cognitive ability. He'll still send me a shell script to do random shit like translating my hdd spinning to raw audio.
@@MARKE911 SO true. Many people I know, including my wife, are afraid to go to a mall, because of the criminality and just general disorder and rudeness. There is no longer anything of interest for me at a mall.
Man, this video struck me right in the feels. I was a kid when all these stores started dying out and closing, only to get replaced by stupid clothing stores. I really miss going into these stores...
I learned MS-DOS on computers in Fred Meyer's back when they sold computers. I would just literally stand at the computer and learn about commands and the file system. I had free reign on the computers in stores back then.
There is something to what you're saying, but I think the "stuff us nerds just don't care about" is kind of a hot take. Especially coming from a man. I mean couldn't he just say that he doesn't care about it? I do think fast fashion is largely aimed more at women, but I don't think that helps to say that if what you have against yet more clothing stores existing is the materialism/consumerism.
I miss fry’s electronics. That’s where I really got my home theater dream started. I bought hundreds of blu rays, video games, got my x box one bundle bundle there, my first two home theater receivers, my speakers. They would jet you demo whole systems set up as real world living rooms. The ones in Plano and Addison actually had a cafe, so you could eat lunch there and then watch a movie on your favorite demo system. I surely miss fry’s
When I was in high school in 2001, I would drive to Fry's in Sacramento with my buddy and we'd buy RAM, graphics cards, cases, motherboards, magazines, etc. and Fry's was always the only place that had the huge selection of inventory for all types of computer components, and they were usually the cheapest price you could find virtually anywhere. Best Buy or some mom and pop store might have a few similar items, but they were usually way overpriced and only a select few choices, particularly for power supplies and RAM. Fry's was awesome and I have tons of good memories going there and upgrading my PC and checking out all the early 2000s awesomeness they had as a high schooler.
Yeah same, I was absolutely expecting Amazon to be top of the list when it came to things that killed electronics stores, but yeah he's right, 90+% of the stuff they sold is just redundant these days!
@@AntiPseudo Well, there's an app for pretty much anything nowadays. Even my bum basic, hand-me-down Nokia 3220 which I used to carry back in late 2000s and early 2010s was capable of doing most of the stuff mentioned in the video. Even had a blurry VGA camera with picture quality on par with early consumer digital cameras.
"Couldn't they just walk in with a piece of paper and a pencil?" Yeah, I tried that in the 90's in Germany while trying to select an affordable PC for my friend who wasn't electronics-savvy. I went through the displayed hardware, recording specs and prices in a notebook, until the security showed up and escorted me out with pretty much the same reasoning. Obviously, the PC was later bought in a different, smaller store.
Ah yes, smart business tactic of banishing price conscious customers. Instead of getting a little money, they get no money! Such a massive improvement!
@@nullpoint3346 I mean it's understandable from a buisniess prospective, you may lose money from kicking some people out that are money savy but if a direct competitor can slightly undercut you you'd be losing way more, but yeah it definitely sucks glad it's much easier now with online shopping
It's not about just the prices. It's about the layout and presentation. Retail is a cat & mouse psychology game. A competitor would video a store to study where and how products are arranged, how customers move around and react. Same reason they collect all that data online. It was tougher to hide a camera then, and data harvesting was in it's infancy. These days they just try to hack each others customer data.
With regard to "why wouldn't the store let me take pictures inside the store?"...stores are protective of the WAY things are displayed in their stores. There can be a lot of science, research, and design that goes into how a store is laid out. For example, what kind of shelves are used, what products are displayed at the end of an aisle, etc.
I just can't buy it, I think it was just a case of the lack of knowledge and thought going into everything, after all, I had pocket cameras in the 1960s that allowed me to snap pictures without anyone becoming aware it was happening, and the electronic stores sold them, so they knew what they were used for.
I have very fond memories of going to Incredible Universe with my grandfather in the 90s. It's one of the reasons I became such a PC enthusiast. I was, and still am sad when that store closed down. Fry's recaptured a little of it, and I absolutely loved their component and DIY section. Such a loss that one is now gone too.
I really miss Radio Shack (the old Radio Shack), it was so convenient to be able to just run into Radio Shack and buy a part/component instead of ordering it online and having to wait for shipping... plus it was always fun to just cruise around electronics stores and nerd out lol
That catalog he had, I remember going though those like some loved the Sears Wishbook. I too love being able to online shop and I guess that makes me part of the problem. Good thing we still have Best Buy around me, cable modem took a crap and I was able to get one of the shelf. I now keep a spare. Also I am 5 min from Chicagoland's mighty Abt. Electronics. Still I shop online but can pick up my order rather than wait.
I miss the rows and rows of components. Its exactly that. When you forgot a resistor, it was nice to have a store 20 minutes away to pick one up. Microcenter is about the best we get now
@@blackbird1234100 To anyone who is within reasonable driving distance (read: 5 miles) of a Micro Center, I wanna say... y'all are a bunch of lucky SOBs.
It’s well known that online shopping has killed off much of US retail. But I didn’t realize how many products were eliminated by the the smartphone combined with online shopping. Sad to see so many stores and malls disappear.
As Ia child of the 50s, I was a pioneer nerd. I actually built stuff from components. Rummaging through my boxes looking for "some thing", I occaisionally find things like a Radio Shack packet of resistors, or a splitter from Kmart (price sticker .79). You young guys!😉
What I remember most about Radio Shack was the way you almost had to arm wrestle to get out of the store without giving your name and zip code even if all you bought was a AA battery.
While I had the same problem getting out of the store, the guys knew there stuff on the electronics front and would be willing to endure it now if when you ask a employee a question you got more then a blank stare and that is only if you can chase them down to actually ask them something.
I used to work at one. People would argue with us about addresses. I think that Radio Shack in its original form was a speciality boutique shop that only professionals and hobbyists would shop at, and it made sense to keep such information because it was more like a community. We would use addresses and such if we needed to contact people for some kind of follow up about their product, or mail them documentation they left behind or if they abandoned their credit card.
@@CamdenBloke That's certainly a more positive way to look at it. I never was the type to give clerks a hard time- but the questions every time were irritating. Especially when paying cash. I came in a lot when working on a project, and they would constantly ask me if I wanted to buy a cell phone too.
I described to my kids how the electronics departments of some stores, like Kmart, all the TV's and hi-fi stuff was in a dark room. You walked in an it had a unique scent to it, like hot electronics and ozone. The glow of all the lighted dials, LED's, etc were just exciting.
@rustychrome: Oh, yeah, they did play up the Star Trek/disco light show in those rooms! My favorite had the sofas in front of the $$$$ rear-projection TVs (4x3 and SD, and IIRC, you could still see the scan lines. But it was cool at the time)
I loved my VIC-20. It changed my career choice. I loved Radio Shack and when I moved to the San Fernando Valley (NW Los Angeles) and discover Fry's -well, it was heaven.
Thank you for the video. It brought back a lot memories. I had forgotten about EB and Babbages until you brought them up again and then a whole flood of memories came back. I also remember Camelot Music and Ritz camera store. KB Toys. We also had a Sam Goodie's music store and a Montgomery Wards. My first cell phone was a bag phone from Radio Shack. It is really sad that no one will be able to have these experiences like we did.
I used to work at Babbages at the mall part time during Christmas as "Jobby" just to make some extra cash on the side, plus taking advantage of the employee discount on games. I was really good friends with the manager so he hired me on the spot when I asked if he did not mind some extra help around Christmas. The mall across the highway from my place not only had a Babbages, but it also had an EB, as well as THREE record stores (Camelot, Musicland, and Sam Goody), and a fairly sizable video game arcade. None of that exists anymore, although there is a Game Stop still in that mall. However, at least just down the highway from the mall, there is a "retrocade" that opened up fairly recently. I've been in there numerous times and that place is always hopping, so at least I can still go to an old-school 80's style arcade like I did when I was a kid!
Fry's bought out Incredible Universe in the mid '90s (at least the few stores that were still open), and over time converted them to Fry's Electronics.
The thing I really miss is flea market electronics vendors. There were big tables with electronics and computer parts 10+ years old that I had so much fun looking through and talking to the vendor about when I was a kid. Since it was all older/cheaper stuff, I could actually convince my parents to buy something for me every once in a while. On one trip to the flea market back in mid 90s, I spotted a complete IBM PS/2 system containing a blazing fast 286 CPU, a full megabyte of RAM, and a huge 170 MB hard drive and my mom actually bought it for me! It even had the original heavy-duty clicking keyboard and monochrome monitor. I had so much fun tinkering with it and learned so much about computers. If I didn’t have an older system to mess with like this when I was a kid, I doubt that today I’d have the same level of deep understanding of how computers work.
And if you had a faulty item or another problem you could return to the store for face to face help, and get a replacement item(or a refund). Plus seeing things up front, meant you could ascertain styling and size issues for your living room. There could be a time when we regret the closure of all these stores.
Virtual reality store shelves help to mitigate this problem. Or those 3d still image webapp things that you can rotate. Once lidar or an analogue is cheap and convenient enough for stores to scan their goods, we'll be able to get a better picture of them from home
@@jek__ That's the 1st i've heard of these rotating 3D images. Nice thinking. In a few years we'll have phones that can project 3D images, just like in Star Wars. Help me Obi Wan. Help me. Maybe it's about time i bought a mobile phone; but i can't afford the phone calls.
Short answer: They got dumbed down to selling cellphones and junk RC trucks, and we stopped coming. What little components they did carry were overpriced in little baggies in drawers, and when we rifled through them looking for what we wanted, we got funny looks from the store staff that was selling batteries and cell phone plans.
Yep, plus they stopped keeping up with the trends in the electronics hobby. We had to mail order anything made past 1983 anyway, so why bother. I worked at Radio Shack about the time John Roach abandoned the loyal hobbyist.
@@bryede I worked in a mall software store, opening and closing it, and by the end of it I had pirated the entire Macintosh section... no small feat. Every morning I would come in, and for an hour in the back re-shrinkwrap all the stuff I had taken home and copied lol. It was for my own personal use, and I never would of been able to afford any of it anyways on that minimum wage, so no big harm, but kind of funny. It was 10x better than today's Gamestop. If only it had paid 5x more. The manager made $15/hr, which was okay, but everybody else made nothing. Still, fun place to work at the time because we were all a bunch of characters and the customers that came in were fun. Where else could you play video games locally... at work. Just about all the sales were credit card sales. I miss places like Computer City and CompUSA tho... even though I never bought anything, it was fun to look. The further you go back in time, the more fun the computer stores were, and the more varied was the merchandice.
I was looking for a can of electrical switch cleaner recently and had to shop around in what shops are left. The guys that work in some of these 10th rate excuses for businesses haven't even heard of switch cleaner. I live in the U.K and everything is near enough gone nowadays. Shops like Tandy, Maplin, Independent stores as well like small computer game stores. Even mainstream chains selling electrical items have largely scaled back or gave up selling a lot of products altogether. Most of the took for granted shop spaces with the exception of big chains are vacant or been turned into yet more hipster eateries or cheap fast fashion stores. It's an unspoken shame what the West has become under the banner of a "progressive" society. The U.S always had more shopping than the U.K would ever dream of having but it's fukin ridiculous what tech giants have done to the world and the West in particular.
I use to operate a BBS in the Ft. Worth area for years back in the 90s. My parents spent thousands at these stores growing up. It's fun to reflect on them.
I remember the weird system they had where you couldn't just pick the games up off the shelf, they basically just had a wall with box shots and you had to take a ticket to the counter and they'd give you the game. It still seems bizzare where even today, the items might be in a glass case but they're right there you just need to ask someone to open it up and then you can just check out normally.
@@Tahngarthor Yes! Sometimes the front and back were next to each other. Eventually as more consoles came out you could flip the box shot up to see the back. The ticket counter also blew my mind. ALL THOSE GAMES.
@@Tahngarthor they did that to prevent theft, because $50 for a game was insane back in the 80's and 90's (we're talking like $100 for a single game today!). So, to try to curb theft, they locked up their games, so you'd have to pay for it first, then collect it later. They changed that when they remodeled into the R Zone, and started putting them into locked cases that had to be unlocked behind the counter.
I loved Fry’s so much. I used to drive down to the Fremont, CA, store, but sometimes I think there was a Concord, CA, store which was an alternative, or somewhere close, but there was never a bit more interesting and useful store. This was the place to get all the com-oneness to build your own computers. Cases, motherboards, power supplies, and everything else you needed. Can’t say how great Fry’s was, and truly, so much better than any other electronics and electrons component store. Also, terrific for electronic devices, and even ovens, refrigerators, stereos, ghettoblasters(!) and so much else. It seems to have been destroyed by Amazon.
And if you had the right one the manager built models. Went in there a lot after I found that out as I was getting into lighting up my ships. Got a lot of good advice and ideas. Guy got screwed by them. They never said anything about closing and he had a lot of stock invested for retirement. He lost money on all of that.
@@francisdhomer5910 In fairness, the writing had been on the proverbial wall for over a decade (nearly two decades if paying close attention) that Radio Shack was ultimately going to implode and was a near foregone conclusion in the last several years of Radio Shack’s existence, so closure really was not a surprise to anyone paying any attention. Radio Shack went downhill tremendously once they closed their catalog business and shifted nearly everything over to cellular sales instead in the mid to late 90s... they got by on that for about 10-15 years so long as there were few other reputable nationwide chains selling cellular service and phones, but once everyone and their mother was selling cellular service plans and phones there was no longer a compelling reason for people to go to Radio Shack anymore and they had already killed off nearly everything that once made them a major hobbyist and novelty item destination for many. Your friend was effectively gambling big time on Radio Shack beating the,overwhelming odds and rebounding, thus a huge payoff, but their debt holder specifically forbid any significant changes to their business model that might have facilitated their survival nor any additional or outside cash infusions to keep them alive. Radio Shack in those final years was much like the GameStop of today, maybe a miracle happens and GameStop is bought up by an exceedingly generous angel who successfully saves the chain, but to anyone paying attention the death of GameStop is a near foregone conclusion as they are hemorrhaging money, customers, and outright ripping off customers (e.g. canceling paid preorders at closing stores and pocketing the customer’s money and making it very difficult for customers to recover their own money) and low level employees just to keep the lights on a little longer so the top execs can give themselves one final annual bonus for their epic incompetence (the classic Golden Parachute - could you imagine if the rest of us regularly received huge bonuses whenever our bosses fired us for gross incompetence or neglect?!)! I do believe they could have saved Radio Shack had their debt owner wanted to allow such by realigning and reinventing Radio Shack with the Maker movement in mind and partnering with Makerspaces, etc., - or even creating their own Makerspaces on a Nationwide level - providing folks with not only ready access to hobby related parts and services (both same day for stock items and free pickup mail order) as well as equipment sales and rental for Makers. The 2008 recession would have been a great time to have made that move as retail space and real estate prices were substantially depressed due to the many business closures in that recession, so creating Makerspaces would have been a much less costly experiment and Radio Shack still had significant cash on hand back then that could have been used to help finance the conversion and marketing blitzes not to mention a passionate Maker movement they could have allied with for additional free publicity and members/customers. However, by the final terminal years such would have required both bold vision and a significant outside cash infusion and their debt holder would not even authorize them to close and sell off their poorest performing locations, much less pursue a bold vision to save a much beloved institution amongst those of us who grew up with Radio Shack and their catalogs! It is pretty clear that their major debt holder WANTED Radio Shack to shutter for their own financial reasons given they did everything possible to ensure its demise by forbidding any real changes in a dead business model and now allowing them to close poor performing and redundant locations. The final closure and liquidating of Radio Shack was not only a very sad day for the electronics hobbyists that grew up with Radio Shack but also for the amateur (ham) radio community as that was where Radio Shack’s origin story begins, hence the name “radio shack”!
@@ethanpoole3443 Thanks for your reply. To be clear on my friend he worked for them for 20 years, almost always treated him right but his biggest problem was he was small town. It was hard for him to think of people trying to screw other people. The week before everything fell down he had been told things were going good and he had nothing to worry about. In other words he was too trust worthy. He has bounced back from all of this but no where near where he was. He was one of the few stores who was doing good due to what you mentioned, the HAM people in our area. He also tried to give personal service to everyone and tried to have his people do the same. (Sometimes he still had idiots that understood nothing nothing about like customer service) Radio Shack screwed themselves all over. Myself I felt Tandy was a good product. Still have an old Tandy computer somewhere and it works. They had interesting stuff that covered everything from a young child interested in electronics to the crazy guy down the street building his first Skywatch to take over the world. Then I first started looking into lighting my models and showed their choices my imagination ran wild. Not only could I build the Starship Enterprise but I could outfit a control panel making you feel like you could fly it. (Never did, cost) As a budding nerd I could spend hours wandering around. Near the end all I did was orbit around thinking Yep can buy that somewhere else and better. Another thing that killed it, things started feeling cheap. Now we have on line, which don't help the new people coming into anything. You have read me talking about models, if you got interested an wanted to learn what do you do? Talk to me? We may never chat again. Chat online with someone at these sites? Once more you don't know them you don't know if they know the hobby or are reading a script. And if you take time to think and come back later you may never see them again. Yes you can call me a Boomer. I miss the days where there were human interactions. But the good workers back them learned to read their customers, learned what they were not saying and was able to steer them towards what they wanted needed or in some cases what the company wanted them to think they needed. I won't go into Gamestop. That is a whole ten page chat to start. Thanks for your comments Have a good day. Frank
Believe it or not, up to at least the 2015 bankruptcy, corporate Radio Shacks still had a ton of the basic electronic parts needed to make a lot of stuff. It was just marginalized and relegated to the back of the store, and most stores the employees didn't know crap about any of it. But, would you like to upgrade your cell phone? Their addiction to wireless sales to subsidize their labor costs (SPIFFs and commissions added a LOT of fat to sales associates paychecks) is what most killed their future, and ability to even change. They got so dependent on it, just 1 month of even near zero wireless sales could tank the company, if their cash reserves went away. When Julian Day left as CEO, his successor Gooch literally doubled the number of VPs and other high level execs, and in 6 months dried up ALL of their cash reserves. The shrinking sales due to simple marketplace competition alone was enough to throw them into the red. They didn't know how to get their enthusiast customers back, and couldn't pivot to do so fast enough for it to save them.
@@ericcooley9407 Gamestop is Babbages and Software Etc. Those two merged in '94 and changed their name to Gamestop in 2000. Funco was also bought and combined with this set.
My wife and I used to hit up Egghead, CompUSA and Software, Etc. on Sunday afternoons. Now on occasion I go to the Microcenter that is 10 miles from me. I like to support Microcenter. If you are lucky enough to have one nearby, remember to support them.
As a 50 year old Texan, thanks for the blast from the past. I fondly remember all those places. God, Radio Shack and Babbage's was the holy temple. Hope you are recovering well from the winter apocalypse. We fared pretty good here in Houston. Oh one toy store you didn't mention was Children's Palace, where I got my Magnavox Odyssey 2 games.
I remember Children's Palace, and have at least one childhood Transformers cardback with their price sticker. It's cool to have evidence of where various toys were bought.
As a Swede, you get a bit jealous... By mail order you could buy a lot of stuff but not everything. In the 80s, some friends and I ordered a SEARS catalogue from the U.S. It took about a month to get it here. Then we leafed through it for a couple of weeks and sent an order. Another month went by. Then the stuff arrived! And they were, from a Swedish point of view, decent prices. In those days, a dollar cost just over SEK 5. Today, a dollar costs almost SEK 11! Plus customs duties and large shipping fees. But we now have Amazon, eBay and others, and virtually everything comes from China. We even had Swedish-built 8-bit computers from Luxor! Agree that the big shopping centres do not have much of value (for me) to offer. BUT they do have a couple of shops with technology and electronics that I sometimes visit.
I'm not the oldest guy in the audience, but I was born in the 80's. You're absolutely correct that there's nothing out there like there was. RadioShack was one of the coolest places until about the mid 90's.
Microcenter is pretty much the only electronic store left. I think they are able to stay alive due to their focus on PC building and graphics cards. They also don't have many stores, so they can concentrate demand at their existing locations. And everytime I've ever gone to my local Microcenter (outside Detroit), it is ALWAYS busy no matter the day.
@@trickyrat483 exactly. When 8-bit guy was talking about the 80's nostalgia of going to the computers stores in the shopping malls, I was having a flood of vivid flashbacks. It was literally like yesterday
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Stores full of electronics and devices. I’ve seen shops full of discs able to reflect the sunlight. All those electronics will be lost in time. Like tears in the rain.
You can still do that stuff if you visit Japan, they're kinda stuck in the 90s in some ways. There's a whole district of Tokyo that's almost entirely electronics stores and arcades.
Are you talking about Akihabara district in Tokyo. It's also full of retro games shops that are stuffed full of... well everything! As well as still having multi-story Game Arcades. It's a place you will see nothing like in the west.
When I was going to college in the early 1980's I would get a lab parts list to buy the needed components at Radio Shack. I could also order any vacuum tube I needed to repair old vacuum tube radios and TV's. I could also order picture tubes for TV's. Those were expensive as they were made per order and it was a month to 6 month turnaround to get one. More than half the store shelves were electronics components and build-it-your-self electronics kits. That all ended in the mid 80's to the early 90's. It got to where TV picture tubes were costing more than a new TV of the same specs. As far as vacuum tubes, good luck finding the rear old tubes used in high-end military transceivers used in WW 2 and Korea. And old tubes used in short-wave radios are hard to get now as well.
I remember being a kid in the 00’s and even then, these types of things were sold. I loved looking at all the items. I miss the period when the internet existed but only when I was at home (more or less) When I went out, I could only call or text. It meant I saw more people and had more real experiences. I once drew a shopping centre map purely from memory when I was a teen. That’s how much I was at the local shopping centre.
The reason they didn't allow people to record inside stores and malls, it is because they didn't want people recording whether or not they had security cameras and where the cameras were located. It was about theft prevention.
I doubt it. It's not that difficult to just look around and memorize, especially given that back in those days they probably had even fewer cameras than today.
You could literally walk around with a pad and write their locations down. There wasn't actually any valid reason to prohibit camera usage. Only the most idiotic robbers would use an overt camera to case a store.
I started in electronics in the late 70s. We had Lafayette Electronics, Radio Shack was everywhere, Dick Smith electronics which did not last long in the US, and myriad other electronics parts and components stores. Now, on-line is about the only place to get anything. I mourn their passing, specially Frys.
Thank you Mr. Bit Guy. This is my favorite video to which you have posted and I've literally watched it a dozen times. My first computer was a C64 which I purchased in 1985 and used it until 1991. I have to admit I still whish I still had it and the the peripherals I bought for it. I loved the bitter sweet sentimental connection this video gave to all of us nerds that grew up in the 80's ogling at the latest technology and got to dream of owning something so fantastic as what we could look and and touch while browsing at the stores. I can still remember how amazed I was watching the Christmas Commodore 64 demo at the local software store way back in 1985. I think I must have watched it at least a dozen times before going home from my moms grocery shopping trip and fantasized how I could obtain one of these machines.
I was born in 1970. During the '80s, one of the great things about going to electronic stores is that you can actually see (and touch) in real life, the devices shown in magazines and catalogs. It was kind of a "miracle" to see the actual device working. I miss the smell of those stores too.
There is one big electronics store holding on in the UK called PC world but they shoot them selfs in the foot when I went there to get a new laptop they said they don't keep very many in store and I'd need to buy it online. So I have no reason to ever go there again and I didn't buy the Computor I wanted from them.
DigiKey and Mouser took their place. David even worked for Mouser.. he was ahead of the game. Places like MonoPrice and Startech specialized in telling you Chipsets and documenting obscure technical guts so you didn't have to do Teardowns to suss it out yourself and compare.
This. Until a few months ago we actually had a small electronics shop in the neighborhood. You could get just about any part. Heck, you could even check tubes (remember them) and get replacements. Sigh.
@@jasonk9779 That being said you now have to buy things in bulk even if you need just 1 or 2, and can't mix and match so can still mount up cost and a lot of wastage.
RIP Maplin. RS are still around in the UK, but they have very few branches. Nowadays, you mostly have to hunt through sites like AliExpress to find a store that will let you buy just *ONE* component and not have a minimum order of 100 of them!
Part of the fun of electronic stores was coming in to make a simple purchase (like picking up a few blank tapes) and seeing everything else on display as you walked through the store to get to what you wanted. Even if you didn't end up buying anything else that day, seeing certain items got you excited for when you'd eventually come back after you started your summer job and got your first paycheck. Online shopping makes it very easy to search for exactly what you want and buy it without even checking out anything else.
Awesome video, sir! A pity I didn't watch it before making my own one on the same topic, but I do share with you the helplessness for lack of media: these places were indeed kind of kept secret! Keep up the great work.
This is the gen-x lament - similar to the way parents of gen-x used to fondly remember the small town grocer who knew them by name. Times change and now we are living in the nostalgia of our children’s generation.
Nostalgia is not the whole takeaway. A non-tactile, private experience is a social & psych change. We buy everything on Amazon, sit on the couch, and interact with nobody but the UPS guy? That is a major shift.
Not all nostalgia is false. I recently found a butcher with great products that's almost the same price as the grocery store. It's a vastly superior experience, and benefits the community, unlike Amazon.
Even gen z kids miss stuff like this. Even though our local mall was dying around us, it was still a popular place for kids to hang out. You used to be able go to places like books a million, GameStop, toys r us, brookstone, etc. to find some decent electronic novelties and toys. You still went to the movie theatre and snuck into the movies without paying. Now all of us are stuck in our homes. Most of the stores in the mall are closed except TJ Maxx, Macy’s, JcPennys, and some sports store.
Many Local Game Stores are still run like thoes old mom and pop groceries. Go hang out regularly and they'll learn your name and greet you warmly when you come in (I own a LGS so we try).
As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I can tell you that shopping as a kid / teenager was a lot more fun than it is in the 2020s. The "experience" is light years ahead of shopping online, and it is sad that it is gone forever.
knowledge and technical details were rarer back then, the amount of knowledge and data at the touch of a finger now is amazing. one reason the orient has exploded with technology, powerful computers, good design software, and internets. back in the 80s the lucky few or people in the industry had BBS and access to company and colleague knowledge. even collecting technical books was a challenge and expensive. (now ebooks etc are abundant online) mid 90s the internet gave anybody with the tools the means the connect and explore.
You can’t beat the smell of electronic circuit boards and all the heat being generated by hundreds of receivers, CD players, tape decks, televisions, VCRs and car stereos. It was a sight and smell to behold.
Quite right, but the present is not so bleak as it may seem. Today, a decent offline audio store carrying three dozen of obscure high end brands is a far, far more interesting place than the chain stores of the 80s. Or crate-digging for vinyl records. Or the arduino-diy stores that look like "robot wars" arenas.
When I moved from Texas to New England about 15 years ago, the first thing I began to miss was Fry's. Fortunately in Needham Massachusetts there's a place called You-do-it Electronics Center that can meet most of my needs. It's still there and it's going strong. But it can't take the place in my heart that Fry's had.
Wow, thanks for that - great video! What a nice trip down memory lane, in that you noted a lot of the experiences from back then. I was a teenager in the mid 80’s so I remember it very well. Roanoke, Va’s Valley Mall was very much like the one you described. Babbages was always one of my favorite stores, and that is where I bought a majority of the software for my Commodore 128. BEST was also a great place to shop.
I can also remember when I was younger walking into these electronics stores and even though a certain percentage of the employees were just there as part-time workers etc., a good amount were hobbyist or enthusiast and could answer questions. The past few times I’ve gone to some of the remaining electronics stores like Best Buy etc., not only do the staff seem completely uninformed about their products, nobody seems in the least bit interested in trying to answer any questions.
@@maidenthe80sla We did had brick and motor stores for electronic parts at one time. Radio Shack was one of them. But that was probably in part of back in the day, when something electronic breaks or had something burn up inside of it. You where more inclined to get it repaired, then to throw it out and buy a new one.
I miss going into the electronics stores and just browsing the shelves and shelves of big-box games, reading all the descriptions, looking at the pictures. The clerks knew you weren't going to buy shit, but they chatted with you anyway. Finally, one day you saved up enough for that copy of Daggerfall, and took it home to delve into the world of adventure.
I’m a high schooler and Daggerfall is my favorite TES game. However, I prefer the Unity version as the controls are much easier to handle. I have played the original game though.
In the trailing years of Radio Shack's life, they actually turned into Cell Phone stores. Their main income was from selling cell phone plans for all the various companies. And if you tried to get a job there during this time, the most important aspect was whether you were a good salesman. They didn't care one bit about whether you knew electronics.
For probably the last decade of Radio Shack's existence, I never had a need to go there and when I did, since I didn't need a cell phone or accessories for my phone, it didn't have much to offer. The most recent fond memories of Radio Shack that I have are all the way back to the era when they had the "Internet center" at the center of the store and you could use the Internet on the computer. It was DirecWay Satellite, which sucks today but in 1999 compared with dial-up, it was amazing to use.
can confirm, worked at radioshack in early-mid 2000s in it's final "hay day" years before all the closings and inevitable bankruptcy in early 2010s. it could have survived as a cell phone store even as that's what mattered, the market for electronic components had dwindled and more viable online anyways. what was a killer is the structure of the company and they couldn't outlive internal lawsuits. They made a HUGE mistake in restructuring along with just typical treatment of employees like garbage. Policy was never to pay over minimum wage and encourage income through "spiffs" which was $5-15 for every cellphone sold. A busy store with some good skills could get you $5 bucks extra an hour for sure, not bad but on average pay would work out to maybe $6/hr over like $5.15. Then for managers, they were required to work Mon-Sat, 6 days a week, 48 hours minimum. BUT they restructured the business at some point in late 90s to a system that classified store managers as just assistants and regional managers as store manager, kind of like a "multi-store manager" in an attempt to lower pay offered to actual store managers saying "well our stores are small, you have staff of less than 5 people typically, sooo you're not really a true manager" They did not realize this also meant they were in a classification now that required overtime pay unlike most management roles. For probably half a decade they litigated and semi-successfully delayed court decisions with extra filings and such but what they did was just flat out illegal. Now to make matters worse they continued the practice all through these years just adding on millions of hours of overtime due ANNND the best part is they started to fire managers as soon as they found out they were signed onto these class action lawsuits creating hundreds of more lawsuits for wrongful termination. In the end the hundreds of millions owed in stolen wages and wrongful termination ended them as those very vocal and strong facing practices of "our employees dont matter" also meant they weren't selling anything and couldn't cover the loses and they went under.
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MicroCenter is actually doing pretty well. The location near me almost always has a full parking lot. Probably because they innovated with their product selection and their large focus on PC components.
Agreed, the only electronics stores that remain here are Best Buy and a small indie chain that specializes in computer parts and accessories.
lol salc1 I didn't expect u here :)
There also aren't many of them. One hour drive for me!
oh hi salC1 i didnt know that you watched this
As an arcade tech, I'm super grateful Micro still exists even with their weird and diverse product selection. Some of the games I work on still use VGA or serial connections and communications, and when I have a game go down, I need it back up ASAP. Being able to send someone to dip over there and buy the cable/connector/component we need, or have them pick it up on their way in to work instead of waiting and having a machine offline for 2-5 days for shipping is a godsend.
8-bit guy in the 80s: Alright, I'm gonna film these stores so I can use it in my youtube videos 30+ years later.
He’s so resourceful
Actually, I'd say that's not a bad idea when you think about it. One example would be movie theaters. With the way things are going these days, they may not eventually be around, so having documented footage of theater interiors will be the stories you can pass on and say how we would all go and watch shows on a 40 foot screen. I'm 38 and when the time comes when I eventually have grandkids, I'll bet they'll look at me and say, "You actually carried around phones?"
@@trekzilladmc A tram and bus company had the habit to photograph the places where works on bus stop and tram line were done, for documentation and liability protection. They stored all the photos, some going back to the horse drawn carriages. So places that were completely destroyed and old bus and trams were accidentally photographed and nowadays those technical photos become a really interesting time capsule
Makes me wish I had risked getting escorted out to get pictures of these. You never think at the time that something like that would have value years later.
@@retrolinkx I'm sure that the store owners have a photo.
I remember that there was this club in Montreal, on the north shore, by the river. It had a large territory, a large parking lot. I think everybody knew about it. It was called the Octogon. I was too young to go but I did bike by it often. There is a bike trail going by it.
It was destroyed maybe 20 y ago and they built apartments.
There are maybe 5 photos of it online.
The Octogon appeared in a movie called Cruising Bar.
Don't forget the social aspect. With physical stores, you get to meet other nerds face to face, now you mostly have digital friends on chat.
8:20 Nailed it! This is why so many shopping malls are dying, if your not interested in shopping for clothes or jewellery there just isn't much to see or do at these places anymore. A few malls could be saved by introducing new vendors that appeal to different interests, but the rent for retail space in most malls is cost prohibitive for most small businesses. This is why you will rarely if ever see a comic book store, hobby shop, yarn shop, art supply store, etc etc in a mall.
This is also why nowadays you typically find more of a variety of stores, that have nothing to do with clothing and jewellery in the strip mall complexes across the street. Since the rent there is probably a little more cheaper, then in the actual mall building.
My local mall is succeeding largely on restaurants. BTW-love the guidelines.
Why go to the mall when amazon will put it on your porch
There’s a mall down the hill from me that I’ve been revising for around 30 years. There used to be used cd stores, independent video game stores, Arcades, electronic stores all sorts of stuff. I went there a few months ago and other than a pretty good comic book store it’s all just clothing and jewelry stores and phone repair shops and The food court sucks. Hardly anyone there it’s almost spooky.
@@206beastman Idk it's still something different when you can hold that thing you want to buy in your hand and like actually look at it, its build quality etc.
School teachers back In the day, "You think your always going to carry a calculator In your pocket".
The other lie, "learn to use the dewey decimal system, you will use it for most of your life"
I got that in 2012, when people already had calculators in their pockets all the time.
Back then in my University, they said to me the same crap. I studied computer engineering so it was nonsense.
I still wish I could go find each of the teachers that said this and show them the calculator app.
Yep, I remember that...LOL
My take away: electronics museums should be laid out like old electronics stores.
That is actually a good idea!
that would be nice. and maybe have it in an old mall. then have all the fastfood chains in there be looking like 80's and 90's interior design. with some tv screens playing 80's and 90's shows and NBA stuff. that would be a blast from the past
I agree so much
and the exhibition pieces are just like the demo units back then
@@paulocuento9949 that sounds amazing!
It’s worth noting that KB Toys, Toys R Us, and even Sears died due to Wall Street pillaging them. It isn’t like kids stopped wanting toys. They decided that it was better to squeeze a retail chain until it was dead so they could make a little more money rather than try to run a store where people want to come and has things they want to buy.
Similar tactics playing out now with Bed Bath and Beyond and Gamestop, and AMC theatres.
That is what the Investment Management Corporations like Black Rock, State Street, and others are doing today, that is why prices are so high on everything, and I mean everything!
That makes no sense. They made a little more money for a few years, and then the businesses were gone forever? No one in their right mind kills a golden goose. Most of those retailers failed due to their own problems, mainly high prices compared to online retail.
Microcenter seems to be the only electronics retailer with staying power now, as long as you live near one, you have the option to visit it, or deal with them online. The one near where i used to live was always a lifesaver if I needed something pronto. Frys was my go to place about 10 years ago and it's sad to see their demise. I think the last time I was at my local location, their stock was severely depleted and their "soup to nuts" stock was getting a tad bit ridiculous. Despite their shortcomings prior to their demise, it was one of those geeky lifesavers if you needed something immediately. Thanks for the trip in the wayback machine!
One time I went there and they had multiple isles of cases of bottled water. Also noticed a lot of cheap luggage. they had to be losing a boat load of money keeping the stores open as long as they did.
The thing I miss about classic Radio Shack was the small parts section. They used to carry almost every wire, cable, adapter, switch, capacitor, led, etc. that a person would need to build electronic devices. It was the place to go for kids to get the stuff they needed for things like Science Fairs.
Back when there was an interest and culture of repairing and even making things yourself. Welcome to disposable everything 2021.
Here in the UK our version was called Tandy, a company that sold mostly Radio Shack branded prodcuts and you could buy individual things like RF connectors, there was a gap for a few years after they went under until Ebay became the main place to buy from, well Ebay was around and you could buy cables but rather than 50p for a connector you needed the entire cable which inc postage may of been £3-£5, wasn't until years later that buying a few connectors/wires in buik worked out literal pennies.
Agreed, used to be able to go there and get the component you needed to fix something. That went away years before they closed. I remember going there looking for parts and leaving disgusted because they didn't have anything even remotely close. And the staff there used to be knowledgeable in nearly everything electronic, but that went the way of the dodo too.
In Houston (better than Dallas all day every day) we had EPO - Electronic Parts Outlet - where you could buy new components and older assemblies - Did I mention WAY better than Far Southern Oklahoma (Dallas).
In Texas at least, Altex is the 80's Radio Shack of today, with all those things you mentioned, on a lot more floor space (but still small compared to Fry's, for example). Friendly, non-pushy staff, too.
Amazon is like getting everything you ever wished for as a young nerd but finding out that it has robbed you of the sense of wonder that shopping in a store had in the 80's.
Doesn't seem to be worth the tradeoff now that we have it
Amazon and Ebay has pros and cons, lots of fun stuff, some good prices, lots of scams and house shenanigans, magical $100 rebuy taxes for the too lazy to check being one obvious one, and Ebay seems to game its users to promote blood in the water feeding frenzy. Ebay is not an honest auction site.
Computer Shopper. Large, paper version of Google for computer parts in the 90s. How I wish I would have kept a few of those - for the luls today if nothing else!
Yeah...I use Amazon for the convenience like everyone else, but it's souless lol
That's honestly the bet way to describe
Online shopping seemed new and magical at first until we started realizing how it was slowly eroding the in-person shopping experience outside of basic department store goods out of existence.
This really took me back. I loved Fry's electronics. I used to get all my computer parts there for my personal builds. We still have Microcenter in Richardson, which is actually where I bought my last gaming computer and a few upgrade pieces. I'm glad we have at least one store left where I can just go and be a nerd- but it's always PACKED. Makes me think they could use another electronics store.
My Xmas radio shack catalog was given to me with a lot of the pages torn out and some pages with chunks torn out. I was later told my parents had not wanted to disappoint me. Parents, duh.
I do love supporting local record stores. I'm surprised vinyl is romanticized enough for it to suddenly be profitable again. It seems like the music loving crowd is pretty fed up with online stuff and DRM, and buying CDs or even cheap casettes remains a reliable way to just reliably have access to music. It is a magical experience to browse through these record stores that have their own personality and have managed to stay afloat despite everything.
>DRM
But DRM hasn't been a thing with music for years now...
That 1985 catalogue was really revealing; literally the entire catalog was swallowed up by one device.
And the television as in the medium not the device is becoming gobbed up by the Internet as well recently. I just have less and less incentive to watch actual any television on my TV every day (it's more like a large monitor now), and I definitely am not the only one, at least in Poland. They just play reruns of reruns of old shows with bad dubbing that I can find in better quality online and have seen already or don't want to, films that are either boring enough to never watch them or I already have them on DVD, again with bad dubbing, and stupid reality shows that I have no idea at all who in the right mind might be watching so many of (and that's even on Discovery Channel: "Some guys looking for gold", "some guys looking for crabs" , "some guys looking for meteorites", "some guys auctioning garbage", "some guys driving a truck". That's really so much fun, ha ha. And takes up most of their schedule, and the rest is popular science programs that are >5 years old and I've seen them like 3 times, air in uncomfortable time slots, and aren't really up to date anymore). THAT's why I don't want a VCR anymore, or any more modern method of TV recording. I miss the days that there was anything worth recording, or even something remotely worth wearing out my eyeballs on the TV, and that is probably never coming back as well.
In the UK Radio Shack was called Tandy and guess what? Carphone Warehouse swallowed it up (Mobile phone shop!)
@@krzysztofczarnecki8238 Back in 2008 as a cost cutting measure when I moved across the country I got rid of my TV and when I got to my new place I never got cable. Its been over 10 years now that TV has not been a part of my life and I don't miss it at all.
@@mhoobag1 In Australia it was called Tandy too.
Including the catalogue itself!
Going to the mall was magical in the 90s, now its depressing.
probably because you were a kid in the 90s. For adults in the 90s, going to malls was almost as soul crushing as it is today.
@@whaaaa869 No. Because in the 90's the shelves were full, every store was occupied, people could afford to go out and buy things with their higher disposable income.
Now it's all FUCKED. Empty stores everywhere, entire shelves void of items in 90% of stores and people can barely afford those few remaining items anyways.
Cheers.
@@TheVanillatech half right. I was a teen in the 80s, so I was also a 90s adult. Overall, shops and restaurants in malls still had a high turnover, its just that they'd get replaced quicker. The individual stores, however, were being killed by Walmart and Target and "big box" and "warehouse" stores. Sears tried to join in with "low everyday prices" by eliminating sales, which did make prices cheaper, overall. But the loyal Sears customers were brought in by "sales-driven" marketing, and people who were looking for low prices but not sales had already become loyal to those newer stores, so it was a disaster, Sears soon went back to sales. Don't forget the growing influence of internet sales and "Cyber Monday". These weren't damaging brick and mortar's until the late 90s , but everyone was paying attention and buying by 1999.
But the malls in the communities surrounding Worcester, in the 90s, for example, had already totally devastated downtown Worcester. There was no need to pay for, or struggle to find, a parking space, people stopped going downtown. Even the porn theater went out of business.
I traveled across the country a few times when re-locating, among other reasons, I know what you're talking about. What bothers me is that you're pretending to be an authority on the subject and putting your problems either typifying every place as all the same, or your issues as the worst. They aren't.
@@TheVanillatech It is much more soul crushing today because of architecture as well. I am not kidding, the way buildings look will drive your soul down as well, attract gangs and it is done on purpose. The beauty of how buildings look has the same psychological effect as a well landscaped area vs a run down unfriendly area does. If you look at every fast food joint today, none have a roof, they all have a simple straight up pattern, no imagination city block buildings as to up until 2010 they all had a roof, looked comfy to go in, welcoming village type building.
@@DMalenfant1 Of course it's done on purpose. The beautiful and highly diverse architecture of the last 300 years and numbers of "movements" were created by highly trained, highly paid master tradesmen (which don't exist in that regard anymore) and designed and paid for by a plethora of individual construction gangs employed by a plethora of individual entities. Money was abdundant, profit was not the be all and end all, sometimes it wasn't even an issue.
Today you have a handful of massive construction conglomerates in a world where 1% of the population own 75% of the land and wealth. Things are done as cheaply as possible, using inferior resources and employing inferior, lower paid tradesmen and the projects are not under supervision of artistic / creative architects (unless its a house in Aspen, of course).
The new buildings here in the UK, both residental and commercial, have for decades ignored the thousand year history back catalogue of national and international designs that we have aquired and that can been seen up and down the Country in the old town areas, infavour of the Wallmart / Modular style of bang it up fast and cheap and sell it high. These new houses look terrible and offer a scientifically pre-calculated amount of living space as to be JUST ACCEPTABLE to the average pleb.
Seeing the empty Fry’s shelves unexpectedly made me teary eyed. I remember going there with my dad. He taught himself computers in the late 80s and taught me at age 7. I thought we were playing, little did I know he was laying foundation for my future. He would commute to Los Angeles for work; and sometime in the 90s he told about this super big computer store with random decorations. We went to Fry’s and I was blown away. Dad got me some stuff and later on in college I took my roomates to the same store.
I really miss seeing fry’s thrive. I miss the hot dog event at the manhattan beach location.
I really miss Fry's. When their electrical components were well-stocked, you could find just about anything for your projects.
"I questioned the authority and got no good answer"
Yeah, checks out man.
Oh man. The Best store. THAT took me back.
When I worked for Target in the 90's they 100% sent us with paper and pen to Walmart to write down their prices
Yeah, that was common practice. And there was nothing the security guards were able to do about it.
"What are you writing, sir?"
"Just making a shopping list."
When I worked at a petrol station at a supermarket in 1994, I had to jump in one of their company cars and drive around writing down the prices of competitor stations.
And now today you can walk around with a 4K camera No one knows you're recording. 😂
@@Jayce_Alexander unless THEY, the hierarchy enslaving you, tries to cancel/ban writing next. god always wins.
@@EgoShredder I did that thing with gasoline pumps too, not with the prices though but with the amount of fuel sold as indicated in that very inconspicuous analog counter ( to know if competing with them is sustainable)
What a legend. This man is all about tech and makes great videos. Has great history. Actually learns to fix items.
And he was trolling block buster and filming it for us to laugh at today. 👍
If I were Amazon, I would have bought all the Fry's locations and turned them into a Warehouse/Amazon shopping center where you could either have your items shipped there or pick it up from there or even just shop the items they have in stock there. It sounds counter-intuitive considering Amazon was one of the reasons Fry's is done and dusted but if they threw in the tech from their fancy grocery stores where you just pick whatever you want and the cameras and computer systems will automatically charge you, they'd cut down on human personel and help prevent porch pirates since people could just come and pick up their items there. Also, instant returns and refunds. The Fry's buildings are so large, they could even fit a small grocery section if they wanted to.
With ruthless efficiency, he's back just over a month later. With a new studio
Shows his dedication
stfu
@@pandapolygon who hurt you?
@@pandapolygon Who hurt you?
@@pandapolygon who hurt you?
You: 'couldn't they just write down the prices or take a catalog?"
Guard: 'Oh, a wise guy. How'd you like spending some time in the mall jail?"
I just heard that voice in my head too LOL
😂
You: "Why don't I sue you?"
Guard: "What?"
News: Guard being sued for harassment during escorting.
In reality, we don't like people recording and taking pictures because we don't want evidence of everything we are doing wrong to get back to corporate
Ah, settle down, Paul Blart.
what you said about the culture is spot on. I miss this time more than anything and it absolutely sucks we can't get it back. I miss hanging out at the mall, checking out all the cool new stuff in stores. being able to see everything and inspect the quality in person is still important. thank god for microcenter!
You nailed it. Especially for me the part about seeing the product in person. There're so many products that look great in a tiny thumbnail and when it arrives, its disappointing junk. Its a frustrating experience.
I grew up in the UK in the 80’s and most towns didn’t have US type malls. You often had what was known as a shopping precinct, which was a much smaller affair. Where I lived we had electrical stores like Dixon’s and Curry’s (which are now merged with PC world) and music shops like Our Price and HMV. Where I lived the electrical stores only really sold the hardware. The games were mostly sold through newsagents like WH Smith and John Menzies. You could also buy games and a limited range of hardware at Woolworth’s, who also sold music and videos. It wasn’t until the 90’s that we got dedicated gaming stores like EB, Game etc etc. Now we also have a proliferation of US style malls.
I’m 55 years old. This video made me a bit sad. I miss those stores and times. A great trip down memory lane. Thanks!
@Eugene Cam When I was growing up in the 1990s, corporate execs were "millionaires" (except for Bill Gates et al); corporations were valued in the low billions; corporate debt was low, and manageable. Our country's debt was bordering to a trillion (give or take depending on the year.
Then I became of age when the Financial Crisis hit; and execs were billionaires, companies would become trillions in market cap and our debt was in the upper trillions. In fact "small businesses" owners tend to have millions on paper.
But one thing that people don't talk enough is what got America (us) here. After the dot-com bust; we were running on low interest rates; this is what helped Amazon and Apple and the others get to those trillions on market cap. If we didn't learn how Japan declined in the late 80s, I don't know what other example to point out. Low interest rates is inherently a bad idea; and asking for trouble.
I love to go to the malls where I live just on the NH side of Boston metro, retail ain't dead. Many still go to bricks. I think it depends by market. And the retailers should tap into what market works best, and how to improve the remaining customer base. I think that would be a positive place to start.
I'm 42, and I miss the days before the internet and cell phones too. Digitization has ruined much in this country.
Too many off brands, that were too expensive! It was like you had to be privileged to buy form some of these stores! That said, I still do miss having one. That’s why I try to support Best Buy & GameStop as much as I can, I also like to see the product that I’m going to buy in action, and I hate paying and waiting for something to be shipped (Especially when don’t know exactly what I’m getting!).
@@MarkMcDaniel I miss it too, but not for going into malls. Malls suck now just as much as they sucked then. The arcade being an exception, and being able to smoke in doors. Playing outside and getting into trouble with your friends beat going to the mall where you had to park, walk, stand in line, try stuff on, walk forever to get anywhere, nah as soon as I scoped out the computer stores in my city (and ended up working for one under the table) I rode my bike around to them and spent my money and time among like minded people. Malls hold absolutely no allure to me - only reason I went to one routinely was because my postal outlet was in one.
Don't miss malls much - maybe screwing around with my friends, but even then as soon as I got a car at 17, I almost never returned to the INSIDE of a mall - the parking lot was used extensively in the winter for drifting and making my own autocross course and spending good portions of cold winter evenings getting my Hyundai (yes, a RWD one) going sideways. Sometimes friends would join. Those are my memories of malls.
Oh and making out with co-workers in the back of the food storage of the restaurant (even though I didn't work there ;) )
Not American but I'm always having a good time reading thoughts of you guys above and the history of US.
The nostalgia is strong with this one. Scrolling through ebay or amazon ads will never compare with spending a day wandering through the mall from electronics shop to music store. Great video, Dave.
Faaaaaaacts. I always had a specific mall route that started at EB/Kaybee/Babbages/whatever game store was in the mall, then Walden's, then Musicland/SamGoody, before I'd inevitably stop in Radio Shack on my way to the arcade FUN Family Amusement Center.
Virtual reality "physical" stores are a thing if you prefer to view things as displayed on shelves as opposed to in a big list
i lived it, it was ok, but i'd rather have the thing i want in 3 days than settle for what those places had that day
I wasn’t even around in the 80s and I can still feel the effects of online shopping & e-commerce! I 100% agree!
@@stoneofverbosity Yeah, virtual interfacing might be disappointing as a replacement for commonplace experiences. But when we use the same technology to allow us to simulate picking up and looking at rocks from planets in other galaxies, it becomes inspiring and wonderful. Products being sold online needing to have good ways for users to interface with and analyze them will put money into the development of the same technology that could expand our experience to places it has never been before
Just watched the video and your final statement rings so true. I'm 41 years old and I am always saying that I MISS the shopping experience. I used to love to wander all the stores looking at the newest games, electronics, gadgets, and computers. It's so depressing now and not fun to shop anymore.
I am 53, so I grew up through the 70's, 80's and 90's. Watching this video brought back so many memories. I remember one epic shopping trip I did right after I graduated college, moved out and got my own place in the early 90's. Going into Sears to buy brand-new 486DX2-66 MHz machine, then going into Babbages and getting a SoundBlaster 16 ASP, CD-rom drive, and another 4 Megs of RAM (Yes, Babbages, also sold computer components in addition to the consoles and games), as well as a couple of games, going into Montgomery Wards to get the monitor, and then hitting up the Musicland to buy a couple of albums. Oh yeah, I also bought a 22-inch Zenith TV and a SNES (both of which I still have) and a couple of games for that as well. Must've dropped nearly $5,000 (in 1993 dollars) on that trip and all in the same shopping mall (I guess what happens when you are a young 22 year-old at the time that just landed a nearly 6-digit income job as a software engineer and need to outfit a new apartment)! Could not do that anymore today at the mall as all of those places are now gone (yes, even the Sears and Montgomery Wards)! Along the same lines, anybody remember when Computer Shopper used to be this massive phone-book size tome of a magazine? It was my go-to if I needed something that I could not find locally for computer hardware and parts. Also, anybody remember the computer shows/fairs as well? Since there was no Fry's Electronics in my area (I am on the east coast), those computer shows were the place to go to find just damn near anything you needed when it came to computer hardware, and there was usually one somewhere in the general Washington, D.C. area nearly every weekend. Do they even have those anymore? With that, there is still a Micro Center up in Fairfax, which is not too terribly far from my place. I did live a couple years in Columbus, OH and do remember going into that big one they have there many times.
My brother in Christ your generation made Amazon the giant it is today you should’ve just went to the store
@@SkiBumMSPYou were certainly one RICH dude!!!
I’m just glad I grew up in the 80’s. It’s a short lived cultural experience that will never be repeated.
From the 1950s to the late 1990s was better times, and the further back you go to the 1950s, the better off America was, the more innovated people were, and the more freedom we had!
You remember Radio Shack of the 80s as a place to buy electronics products (clocks, computers, calculators). I remember Radio Shack of the 60s as a place to buy parts for your actual radio shack (resistors, capacitors, vacuum tubes!). Think about that! P.S. Circuit City was founded in 1949!
Even in the 90s when I was a kid you could still buy parts and tools there. At the end they were nothing more than a glorified cell phone store. The only other place we had locally was a one off store that sold electronic components and related tools. It was awesome, the store inside was a huge mess but if you needed a capacitor, mosfet, wire, etc they had it. Unfortunately the place burnt to the ground and never reopened.
I remember the "lifetime" guarantee tubes. Even made good on that guarantee a few times. *Sigh* No more.
Built my first 11 meter amp with components purchased at RadioShack. The only thing I had to order was some toroids for matching transformers. They were the only electronic supply store that kept Teflon coated wire in stock. Sandman 10/7...
how about the battery of the month club at Radio Shack?
The parts and tools sections of the stores kept getting smaller and smaller, so sad.
Whoa, that's quite the busy background!
it is quite loud
Reminds me of Max Headroom.
its awful and distracting.
Wow it's bold, it's difficult to focus on anything else. [Sort of painful]
It is a migraine.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. We came up in a golden era that I sorely miss.
Especially Fry’s Electronics of the 80’s and 90’s. By the late 2000’s, Fry’s had been ruined by mismanagement.
I hadn't been to a mall in decades and everything you said is spot on. I decided to go to Fry's last year to see if they had any power supplies and it genuinely creeped me out how the place looked compared to the last time I was in it. The electronics section was only partially lit and mostly in the dark with empty shelves and a few sections of things here and there. The place was dilapidated and is probably torn down now. It made me sad and I couldn't stay in there very long.
You haven't missed much, I have ventured into a mall a handful of times in the last decade, and it's always the same - the requisite few big chain home goods/clothing stores, smattering of specialty stores, Sharper Image, Gamestop and a shitload of dodgy kiosks.
I'm only 26 but man, this hit hard. I went to a big mall recently, and it's exactly like you said. Nothing but clothing stores, ugh... I wish I was able to experience the golden age of nerd shopping.
I love the phrase "The Golden Age of Nerd Shopping"! There's a movie title there.
I'd love to see a movie that centers around tech from the 80's till early 2000's. I think that'd be really neat.
I'm 31, and my childhood mall is in it's death throws. They annouced they can't pay the mortgage after this year. The only store that consistantly has people in it is the mall ninja store - incense, swords, throwing kives, and in the back, MTG gaming. Seeing the empty sears building hurts, I spent a lot of time there as a kid. Even the empty storefronts from Holilster, A&F, and American Eagle, which I went to as a teen, are empty shells, devoid of product but filled with memories.
Man, I feel that. There's a mall near me I used to go to, almost all the stores are now gone. Literally all that's left now are a few clothing stores, one department store and a Hobby Lobby. You can still see Radio Shack's name vaguely.
As nice as online shopping is, you'll never replace the charm of walking around stores to see what's new IMO.
"... empty shells, devoid of product but filled with memories.".
-- That makes for a great quote & summarizes all our feelings. My best times browsing stores for technology were in the 1980's & 1990's. Radio Shack, Blockbuster, Sears, Incredible Universe & the final nail, Fry's. All gone. I did take a couple photos inside the local Radio Shack during liquidation in mid 2017. Bought lots of stuff at 40 to 90% off before saying goodbye.
Another aspect of this is what's called showrooming - someone will go into a brick and mortar store, tie up a sales person to help them figure out what they want, and then they go buy it online.
Yep
This is why Best Buy will match Amazon pricing.
That didn't really exist in the 1980s, though. Back then, we just called it "shopping around."
@@stilts121 idk maybe that’s bc ordering online wasn’t a thing in the 80s
@@linkthehero1234 That's what I mean.
The Radio Shack in my area actually managed to stay in business until the chain itself closed.
I remember reading an article in the mid-80's in an Air Force information technology magazine that said that the average "blue-two admin troop" (that would be low-level secretary/receptionist for you civilian types) had more computing power on their desk than NASA had when we put a man on the moon. Thirty-odd years later, it think it's safe to say that your average fifth-grader has more computing power in their pocket than NASA had when we put a man on the moon.
"This town sucks, all there is to do is hang out at the mall.." I'd always say as a teen.. Now the kids don't even have that. On the bright side, no more mall cops to deal with.
Speaking of mall cops, if anyone saw that video a few years back of a cop making a kid do push ups instead of taking them in(I forget what for exactly) that was actually outside of the theatre attached to the Six Flags Mall. It is now a boring ass warehouse and it hurts my soul every time I drive by it.
The 2 malls left here are known as places of violence and drugs. It’s really sad.
Yeah Paul Blart was always ragging on me for running in the aisles
Ikr in my home town growing up adults would complain about the youth hanging out at the park then we got a game crazy and vandalism went waaaaaaaaaaay down and then the adults botched about the owner having a psudo internet Cafe we'd play cs condition zero at his shop, after he lost out to gamestop which was his fault we eventually found planet 8 ball and then kids in town had a place to go again until adults wound up getting mad that we would hang out in broad daylight on 3rd street so 8 ball got closed and everyone was old enough to buy heroin. 2/3 of my graduating class of 30 are addicts or recovering. Shit always broke my heart, one of my friends who fell prey to drugs once thier mom was completely fed up with thier computer usage. The dude was so fucking talented and I learned so much from him it sucks seeing how the drug affected his cognitive ability. He'll still send me a shell script to do random shit like translating my hdd spinning to raw audio.
@@MARKE911 SO true. Many people I know, including my wife, are afraid to go to a mall, because of the criminality and just general disorder and rudeness. There is no longer anything of interest for me at a mall.
Man, this video struck me right in the feels. I was a kid when all these stores started dying out and closing, only to get replaced by stupid clothing stores. I really miss going into these stores...
Could not agree with you more.
I wish I could have experienced the fry's and best stores in their prime.
I learned MS-DOS on computers in Fred Meyer's back when they sold computers. I would just literally stand at the computer and learn about commands and the file system. I had free reign on the computers in stores back then.
@@telengardforever7783 crazy for much Fred Meyer downsized. They even used to sell lumber!
There is something to what you're saying, but I think the "stuff us nerds just don't care about" is kind of a hot take. Especially coming from a man. I mean couldn't he just say that he doesn't care about it? I do think fast fashion is largely aimed more at women, but I don't think that helps to say that if what you have against yet more clothing stores existing is the materialism/consumerism.
I miss fry’s electronics. That’s where I really got my home theater dream started. I bought hundreds of blu rays, video games, got my x box one bundle bundle there, my first two home theater receivers, my speakers. They would jet you demo whole systems set up as real world living rooms. The ones in Plano and Addison actually had a cafe, so you could eat lunch there and then watch a movie on your favorite demo system. I surely miss fry’s
When I was in high school in 2001, I would drive to Fry's in Sacramento with my buddy and we'd buy RAM, graphics cards, cases, motherboards, magazines, etc. and Fry's was always the only place that had the huge selection of inventory for all types of computer components, and they were usually the cheapest price you could find virtually anywhere. Best Buy or some mom and pop store might have a few similar items, but they were usually way overpriced and only a select few choices, particularly for power supplies and RAM. Fry's was awesome and I have tons of good memories going there and upgrading my PC and checking out all the early 2000s awesomeness they had as a high schooler.
It blows my mind when you showed what smartphones got rid of. As a kid from the mid 90s still kinda blows my mind 😂
Same here
Yeah same, I was absolutely expecting Amazon to be top of the list when it came to things that killed electronics stores, but yeah he's right, 90+% of the stuff they sold is just redundant these days!
The upgrade cycle was way more harsh / impressive.
@@AntiPseudo Well, there's an app for pretty much anything nowadays.
Even my bum basic, hand-me-down Nokia 3220 which I used to carry back in late 2000s and early 2010s was capable of doing most of the stuff mentioned in the video. Even had a blurry VGA camera with picture quality on par with early consumer digital cameras.
"Couldn't they just walk in with a piece of paper and a pencil?"
Yeah, I tried that in the 90's in Germany while trying to select an affordable PC for my friend who wasn't electronics-savvy. I went through the displayed hardware, recording specs and prices in a notebook, until the security showed up and escorted me out with pretty much the same reasoning. Obviously, the PC was later bought in a different, smaller store.
Ah yes, smart business tactic of banishing price conscious customers.
Instead of getting a little money, they get no money! Such a massive improvement!
@@nullpoint3346 I mean it's understandable from a buisniess prospective, you may lose money from kicking some people out that are money savy but if a direct competitor can slightly undercut you you'd be losing way more, but yeah it definitely sucks glad it's much easier now with online shopping
@@Not_Loading Most stores that are left will do a price match nowadays if you bring up a competitors name.
It's not about just the prices. It's about the layout and presentation. Retail is a cat & mouse psychology game. A competitor would video a store to study where and how products are arranged, how customers move around and react. Same reason they collect all that data online. It was tougher to hide a camera then, and data harvesting was in it's infancy.
These days they just try to hack each others customer data.
@@peterbelanger4094 Now companies just scrape competitor websites every day and then data mine it.
With regard to "why wouldn't the store let me take pictures inside the store?"...stores are protective of the WAY things are displayed in their stores. There can be a lot of science, research, and design that goes into how a store is laid out. For example, what kind of shelves are used, what products are displayed at the end of an aisle, etc.
I just can't buy it, I think it was just a case of the lack of knowledge and thought going into everything, after all, I had pocket cameras in the 1960s that allowed me to snap pictures without anyone becoming aware it was happening, and the electronic stores sold them, so they knew what they were used for.
I have very fond memories of going to Incredible Universe with my grandfather in the 90s. It's one of the reasons I became such a PC enthusiast. I was, and still am sad when that store closed down. Fry's recaptured a little of it, and I absolutely loved their component and DIY section. Such a loss that one is now gone too.
I really miss Radio Shack (the old Radio Shack), it was so convenient to be able to just run into Radio Shack and buy a part/component instead of ordering it online and having to wait for shipping... plus it was always fun to just cruise around electronics stores and nerd out lol
Then it turned into a place to buy cellbones.
@@louistournas120 The smart bone's connected to the... cell bone!
That catalog he had, I remember going though those like some loved the Sears Wishbook. I too love being able to online shop and I guess that makes me part of the problem. Good thing we still have Best Buy around me, cable modem took a crap and I was able to get one of the shelf. I now keep a spare. Also I am 5 min from Chicagoland's mighty Abt. Electronics. Still I shop online but can pick up my order rather than wait.
I miss the rows and rows of components. Its exactly that. When you forgot a resistor, it was nice to have a store 20 minutes away to pick one up. Microcenter is about the best we get now
@@blackbird1234100 To anyone who is within reasonable driving distance (read: 5 miles) of a Micro Center, I wanna say... y'all are a bunch of lucky SOBs.
I am just happy Microcenter is still hanging on.
barely
Yes, Microcenter is probably the last of the last Brick n Mortar stores.
I just wish they had better locations, since frys shut down, I gotta drive 45 minutes to the nearest microcenter
urhotmom I'm lucky mine is only 1.5 hours away. Some people don't have them in their state haha
@@jordanranstead3016 or have one in the state, but a long ways away (661 miles to the one in Tustin)
It’s well known that online shopping has killed off much of US retail. But I didn’t realize how many products were eliminated by the the smartphone combined with online shopping.
Sad to see so many stores and malls disappear.
As Ia child of the 50s, I was a pioneer nerd. I actually built stuff from components. Rummaging through my boxes looking for "some thing", I occaisionally find things like a Radio Shack packet of resistors, or a splitter from Kmart (price sticker .79). You young guys!😉
What I remember most about Radio Shack was the way you almost had to arm wrestle to get out of the store without giving your name and zip code even if all you bought was a AA battery.
While I had the same problem getting out of the store, the guys knew there stuff on the electronics front and would be willing to endure it now if when you ask a employee a question you got more then a blank stare and that is only if you can chase them down to actually ask them something.
so give a fake one
I used to work at one. People would argue with us about addresses. I think that Radio Shack in its original form was a speciality boutique shop that only professionals and hobbyists would shop at, and it made sense to keep such information because it was more like a community.
We would use addresses and such if we needed to contact people for some kind of follow up about their product, or mail them documentation they left behind or if they abandoned their credit card.
@@CamdenBloke That's certainly a more positive way to look at it. I never was the type to give clerks a hard time- but the questions every time were irritating. Especially when paying cash. I came in a lot when working on a project, and they would constantly ask me if I wanted to buy a cell phone too.
Early form of spamming
I described to my kids how the electronics departments of some stores, like Kmart, all the TV's and hi-fi stuff was in a dark room. You walked in an it had a unique scent to it, like hot electronics and ozone. The glow of all the lighted dials, LED's, etc were just exciting.
@rustychrome: Oh, yeah, they did play up the Star Trek/disco light show in those rooms! My favorite had the sofas in front of the $$$$ rear-projection TVs (4x3 and SD, and IIRC, you could still see the scan lines. But it was cool at the time)
I remember Best Buy having a room like that in Cali back in 2007, it was the first place I would go whenever my grandma went there to buy something.
I loved my VIC-20. It changed my career choice. I loved Radio Shack and when I moved to the San Fernando Valley (NW Los Angeles) and discover Fry's -well, it was heaven.
Thank you for the video. It brought back a lot memories. I had forgotten about EB and Babbages until you brought them up again and then a whole flood of memories came back. I also remember Camelot Music and Ritz camera store. KB Toys. We also had a Sam Goodie's music store and a Montgomery Wards. My first cell phone was a bag phone from Radio Shack. It is really sad that no one will be able to have these experiences like we did.
I used to work at Babbages at the mall part time during Christmas as "Jobby" just to make some extra cash on the side, plus taking advantage of the employee discount on games. I was really good friends with the manager so he hired me on the spot when I asked if he did not mind some extra help around Christmas. The mall across the highway from my place not only had a Babbages, but it also had an EB, as well as THREE record stores (Camelot, Musicland, and Sam Goody), and a fairly sizable video game arcade. None of that exists anymore, although there is a Game Stop still in that mall. However, at least just down the highway from the mall, there is a "retrocade" that opened up fairly recently. I've been in there numerous times and that place is always hopping, so at least I can still go to an old-school 80's style arcade like I did when I was a kid!
THAT BACKGROUND! I close my eyes and I still see it.
It actually gave a me a headache... I love your work, but that background needs to be easier for your eyes....
@@frankklinkers4209 I liked his plain background with his TH-cam Awards... :(.
It looks smaller...
@@frankklinkers4209 omg same, how doesn't he see it?
It looked like a migraine to me.
It's pretty jarring
The speed at which you rebounded from absolute crisis is amazing. It's great to have you back on youtube, dude
Fry's bought out Incredible Universe in the mid '90s (at least the few stores that were still open), and over time converted them to Fry's Electronics.
The thing I really miss is flea market electronics vendors. There were big tables with electronics and computer parts 10+ years old that I had so much fun looking through and talking to the vendor about when I was a kid. Since it was all older/cheaper stuff, I could actually convince my parents to buy something for me every once in a while. On one trip to the flea market back in mid 90s, I spotted a complete IBM PS/2 system containing a blazing fast 286 CPU, a full megabyte of RAM, and a huge 170 MB hard drive and my mom actually bought it for me! It even had the original heavy-duty clicking keyboard and monochrome monitor. I had so much fun tinkering with it and learned so much about computers. If I didn’t have an older system to mess with like this when I was a kid, I doubt that today I’d have the same level of deep understanding of how computers work.
The one thing I miss is actually being able to see what I'm buying before I buy it.
Also, the expectation of it to work properly have changed. There are just so many weird Chinese products that do work "sometimes".
And if you had a faulty item or another problem you could return to the store for face to face help, and get a replacement item(or a refund). Plus seeing things up front, meant you could ascertain styling and size issues for your living room.
There could be a time when we regret the closure of all these stores.
Virtual reality store shelves help to mitigate this problem. Or those 3d still image webapp things that you can rotate. Once lidar or an analogue is cheap and convenient enough for stores to scan their goods, we'll be able to get a better picture of them from home
@@farmerfreakeasy9577 Is now, the time?
@@jek__ That's the 1st i've heard of these rotating 3D images. Nice thinking. In a few years we'll have phones that can project 3D images, just like in Star Wars.
Help me Obi Wan. Help me.
Maybe it's about time i bought a mobile phone; but i can't afford the phone calls.
Short answer: They got dumbed down to selling cellphones and junk RC trucks, and we stopped coming. What little components they did carry were overpriced in little baggies in drawers, and when we rifled through them looking for what we wanted, we got funny looks from the store staff that was selling batteries and cell phone plans.
Very accurate.
Yep, plus they stopped keeping up with the trends in the electronics hobby. We had to mail order anything made past 1983 anyway, so why bother. I worked at Radio Shack about the time John Roach abandoned the loyal hobbyist.
@@bryede I worked in a mall software store, opening and closing it, and by the end of it I had pirated the entire Macintosh section... no small feat. Every morning I would come in, and for an hour in the back re-shrinkwrap all the stuff I had taken home and copied lol. It was for my own personal use, and I never would of been able to afford any of it anyways on that minimum wage, so no big harm, but kind of funny.
It was 10x better than today's Gamestop. If only it had paid 5x more. The manager made $15/hr, which was okay, but everybody else made nothing. Still, fun place to work at the time because we were all a bunch of characters and the customers that came in were fun. Where else could you play video games locally... at work. Just about all the sales were credit card sales.
I miss places like Computer City and CompUSA tho... even though I never bought anything, it was fun to look. The further you go back in time, the more fun the computer stores were, and the more varied was the merchandice.
There at the end when RS started supporting the Maker community I thought they might be able to hang on. But, alas, no.
I was looking for a can of electrical switch cleaner recently and had to shop around in what shops are left. The guys that work in some of these 10th rate excuses for businesses haven't even heard of switch cleaner. I live in the U.K and everything is near enough gone nowadays. Shops like Tandy, Maplin, Independent stores as well like small computer game stores. Even mainstream chains selling electrical items have largely scaled back or gave up selling a lot of products altogether.
Most of the took for granted shop spaces with the exception of big chains are vacant or been turned into yet more hipster eateries or cheap fast fashion stores.
It's an unspoken shame what the West has become under the banner of a "progressive" society.
The U.S always had more shopping than the U.K would ever dream of having but it's fukin ridiculous what tech giants have done to the world and the West in particular.
Wow this was a depressing watch. Seeing things I owned while you flipped through those catalogs.
I use to operate a BBS in the Ft. Worth area for years back in the 90s. My parents spent thousands at these stores growing up. It's fun to reflect on them.
There was no greater wonder as a kid than going to Toys 'R Us's video game section. Sensory overload every time.
Don’t forget about the toys!
I remember the weird system they had where you couldn't just pick the games up off the shelf, they basically just had a wall with box shots and you had to take a ticket to the counter and they'd give you the game. It still seems bizzare where even today, the items might be in a glass case but they're right there you just need to ask someone to open it up and then you can just check out normally.
@@Tahngarthor Yes! Sometimes the front and back were next to each other. Eventually as more consoles came out you could flip the box shot up to see the back. The ticket counter also blew my mind. ALL THOSE GAMES.
That's very true, I remember those times in the 90s and they sold Boglins which was My favorate toy besides Lego.
@@Tahngarthor they did that to prevent theft, because $50 for a game was insane back in the 80's and 90's (we're talking like $100 for a single game today!). So, to try to curb theft, they locked up their games, so you'd have to pay for it first, then collect it later. They changed that when they remodeled into the R Zone, and started putting them into locked cases that had to be unlocked behind the counter.
Someone needs to make a VR Mall Walker game, where you wander through the great malls of the US, visiting the old stores.
Maybe add it to Defunct Land?
@@AltimaNEO Exactly LMAO
No they don't.
i agree. and maybe have all the interior design of the mall and the shops look like they were in the 80s
Need to photogrammetry a mall
WOW! That was quite a rollercoaster of emotion watching this video. Thank you!
I loved Fry’s so much. I used to drive down to the Fremont, CA, store, but sometimes I think there was a Concord, CA, store which was an alternative, or somewhere close, but there was never a bit more interesting and useful store. This was the place to get all the com-oneness to build your own computers. Cases, motherboards, power supplies, and everything else you needed. Can’t say how great Fry’s was, and truly, so much better than any other electronics and electrons component store. Also, terrific for electronic devices, and even ovens, refrigerators, stereos, ghettoblasters(!) and so much else. It seems to have been destroyed by Amazon.
I miss the old radio shack. You could literally build anything electronic with what they had in the store.
And if you had the right one the manager built models. Went in there a lot after I found that out as I was getting into lighting up my ships. Got a lot of good advice and ideas. Guy got screwed by them. They never said anything about closing and he had a lot of stock invested for retirement. He lost money on all of that.
@@francisdhomer5910 In fairness, the writing had been on the proverbial wall for over a decade (nearly two decades if paying close attention) that Radio Shack was ultimately going to implode and was a near foregone conclusion in the last several years of Radio Shack’s existence, so closure really was not a surprise to anyone paying any attention. Radio Shack went downhill tremendously once they closed their catalog business and shifted nearly everything over to cellular sales instead in the mid to late 90s... they got by on that for about 10-15 years so long as there were few other reputable nationwide chains selling cellular service and phones, but once everyone and their mother was selling cellular service plans and phones there was no longer a compelling reason for people to go to Radio Shack anymore and they had already killed off nearly everything that once made them a major hobbyist and novelty item destination for many. Your friend was effectively gambling big time on Radio Shack beating the,overwhelming odds and rebounding, thus a huge payoff, but their debt holder specifically forbid any significant changes to their business model that might have facilitated their survival nor any additional or outside cash infusions to keep them alive. Radio Shack in those final years was much like the GameStop of today, maybe a miracle happens and GameStop is bought up by an exceedingly generous angel who successfully saves the chain, but to anyone paying attention the death of GameStop is a near foregone conclusion as they are hemorrhaging money, customers, and outright ripping off customers (e.g. canceling paid preorders at closing stores and pocketing the customer’s money and making it very difficult for customers to recover their own money) and low level employees just to keep the lights on a little longer so the top execs can give themselves one final annual bonus for their epic incompetence (the classic Golden Parachute - could you imagine if the rest of us regularly received huge bonuses whenever our bosses fired us for gross incompetence or neglect?!)!
I do believe they could have saved Radio Shack had their debt owner wanted to allow such by realigning and reinventing Radio Shack with the Maker movement in mind and partnering with Makerspaces, etc., - or even creating their own Makerspaces on a Nationwide level - providing folks with not only ready access to hobby related parts and services (both same day for stock items and free pickup mail order) as well as equipment sales and rental for Makers. The 2008 recession would have been a great time to have made that move as retail space and real estate prices were substantially depressed due to the many business closures in that recession, so creating Makerspaces would have been a much less costly experiment and Radio Shack still had significant cash on hand back then that could have been used to help finance the conversion and marketing blitzes not to mention a passionate Maker movement they could have allied with for additional free publicity and members/customers. However, by the final terminal years such would have required both bold vision and a significant outside cash infusion and their debt holder would not even authorize them to close and sell off their poorest performing locations, much less pursue a bold vision to save a much beloved institution amongst those of us who grew up with Radio Shack and their catalogs! It is pretty clear that their major debt holder WANTED Radio Shack to shutter for their own financial reasons given they did everything possible to ensure its demise by forbidding any real changes in a dead business model and now allowing them to close poor performing and redundant locations. The final closure and liquidating of Radio Shack was not only a very sad day for the electronics hobbyists that grew up with Radio Shack but also for the amateur (ham) radio community as that was where Radio Shack’s origin story begins, hence the name “radio shack”!
@@ethanpoole3443 Thanks for your reply. To be clear on my friend he worked for them for 20 years, almost always treated him right but his biggest problem was he was small town. It was hard for him to think of people trying to screw other people. The week before everything fell down he had been told things were going good and he had nothing to worry about. In other words he was too trust worthy. He has bounced back from all of this but no where near where he was. He was one of the few stores who was doing good due to what you mentioned, the HAM people in our area. He also tried to give personal service to everyone and tried to have his people do the same. (Sometimes he still had idiots that understood nothing nothing about like customer service)
Radio Shack screwed themselves all over. Myself I felt Tandy was a good product. Still have an old Tandy computer somewhere and it works. They had interesting stuff that covered everything from a young child interested in electronics to the crazy guy down the street building his first Skywatch to take over the world. Then I first started looking into lighting my models and showed their choices my imagination ran wild. Not only could I build the Starship Enterprise but I could outfit a control panel making you feel like you could fly it. (Never did, cost)
As a budding nerd I could spend hours wandering around. Near the end all I did was orbit around thinking Yep can buy that somewhere else and better. Another thing that killed it, things started feeling cheap.
Now we have on line, which don't help the new people coming into anything. You have read me talking about models, if you got interested an wanted to learn what do you do? Talk to me? We may never chat again. Chat online with someone at these sites? Once more you don't know them you don't know if they know the hobby or are reading a script. And if you take time to think and come back later you may never see them again.
Yes you can call me a Boomer. I miss the days where there were human interactions. But the good workers back them learned to read their customers, learned what they were not saying and was able to steer them towards what they wanted needed or in some cases what the company wanted them to think they needed.
I won't go into Gamestop. That is a whole ten page chat to start.
Thanks for your comments Have a good day.
Frank
Believe it or not, up to at least the 2015 bankruptcy, corporate Radio Shacks still had a ton of the basic electronic parts needed to make a lot of stuff. It was just marginalized and relegated to the back of the store, and most stores the employees didn't know crap about any of it. But, would you like to upgrade your cell phone? Their addiction to wireless sales to subsidize their labor costs (SPIFFs and commissions added a LOT of fat to sales associates paychecks) is what most killed their future, and ability to even change. They got so dependent on it, just 1 month of even near zero wireless sales could tank the company, if their cash reserves went away. When Julian Day left as CEO, his successor Gooch literally doubled the number of VPs and other high level execs, and in 6 months dried up ALL of their cash reserves. The shrinking sales due to simple marketplace competition alone was enough to throw them into the red. They didn't know how to get their enthusiast customers back, and couldn't pivot to do so fast enough for it to save them.
Heath Kit was another.
"Unless you count GameStop which doesn't exactly have a bright future"
Quiet, you'll wake up WallStreetBets!
😆 GameStop is newer. Babbage, Software Etc., and one I cannot recall! Those were the childhood stores
doesn't matter even if WSB gets insomniac. what they did may not help gamestop in the long term.
Stonks?
@@ericcooley9407 Gamestop is Babbages and Software Etc. Those two merged in '94 and changed their name to Gamestop in 2000. Funco was also bought and combined with this set.
Paradoxically, the producer of store killers - Apple - has a lot of well-earning classic stores.
My wife and I used to hit up Egghead, CompUSA and Software, Etc. on Sunday afternoons. Now on occasion I go to the Microcenter that is 10 miles from me. I like to support Microcenter. If you are lucky enough to have one nearby, remember to support them.
Work, for now, at a dying mall here in DFW. A former CompUSA worker minion. This was great review & nostalgic trip. Thanks. 👍
As a 50 year old Texan, thanks for the blast from the past. I fondly remember all those places. God, Radio Shack and Babbage's was the holy temple. Hope you are recovering well from the winter apocalypse. We fared pretty good here in Houston. Oh one toy store you didn't mention was Children's Palace, where I got my Magnavox Odyssey 2 games.
I remember Children's Palace, and have at least one childhood Transformers cardback with their price sticker. It's cool to have evidence of where various toys were bought.
The picture of David as a kid holding the camcorder is cute as hell. We kind of forget how big the cameras were in those days.
Or how small David was...
_WHO NEEDS A CAMCORDER THAT FITS IN MY HAND_
_YOU KNOW I WANNA LOOK LIKE A NEWS CAMERAMAN_
- Rhett and Link
@@carbonstar9091 There was "smaller" VHS cameras but with a separate recorder wore to the belt.
As a Swede, you get a bit jealous...
By mail order you could buy a lot of stuff but not everything.
In the 80s, some friends and I ordered a SEARS catalogue from the U.S. It took about a month to get it here. Then we leafed through it for a couple of weeks and sent an order. Another month went by. Then the stuff arrived! And they were, from a Swedish point of view, decent prices. In those days, a dollar cost just over SEK 5. Today, a dollar costs almost SEK 11! Plus customs duties and large shipping fees. But we now have Amazon, eBay and others, and virtually everything comes from China.
We even had Swedish-built 8-bit computers from Luxor!
Agree that the big shopping centres do not have much of value (for me) to offer. BUT they do have a couple of shops with technology and electronics that I sometimes visit.
I remember visiting Radio Shack in those days. When I attended DeVry, we referred to the TRS 80 as Trash 80s.
"who needs that, who uses this anymore"
....I.....I do :(
But the 80s were only 20 years ag...... oh. :(
We do! We do!
@@Darxide23 20 years ago was the 2000's 😔
I'm not the oldest guy in the audience, but I was born in the 80's. You're absolutely correct that there's nothing out there like there was. RadioShack was one of the coolest places until about the mid 90's.
Microcenter is pretty much the only electronic store left. I think they are able to stay alive due to their focus on PC building and graphics cards. They also don't have many stores, so they can concentrate demand at their existing locations. And everytime I've ever gone to my local Microcenter (outside Detroit), it is ALWAYS busy no matter the day.
Out of all your videos! This one hits home! I loved going to the mall on Saturday!
...all those memories will be lost like tears in the rain
Oh great now I've got the triumph song stuck in my head. :-) but yeah I don't even want to know what this place is going to look like in 2045.
one of the greatest movie lines, and movie moments, from one of the greatest movies ever
Electronics stores?
You wouldn't believe the things I've seen..
:)
@@trickyrat483 exactly. When 8-bit guy was talking about the 80's nostalgia of going to the computers stores in the shopping malls, I was having a flood of vivid flashbacks. It was literally like yesterday
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Stores full of electronics and devices.
I’ve seen shops full of discs able to reflect the sunlight.
All those electronics will be lost in time.
Like tears in the rain.
You can still do that stuff if you visit Japan, they're kinda stuck in the 90s in some ways. There's a whole district of Tokyo that's almost entirely electronics stores and arcades.
well we are not allowed to travel, thats our future. corona shit fuck
You’re speaking of Akihabara. Multi story electronic stores! I visited just before the pandemic and will return!
Lots of it in West Taiwan, too.
That's a place I would like to live in, if it wasn't so expensive.
Are you talking about Akihabara district in Tokyo. It's also full of retro games shops that are stuffed full of... well everything!
As well as still having multi-story Game Arcades.
It's a place you will see nothing like in the west.
Great video, brought back lots of memories. Thank you, I enjoyed it.
When I was going to college in the early 1980's I would get a lab parts list to buy the needed components at Radio Shack. I could also order any vacuum tube I needed to repair old vacuum tube radios and TV's. I could also order picture tubes for TV's. Those were expensive as they were made per order and it was a month to 6 month turnaround to get one. More than half the store shelves were electronics components and build-it-your-self electronics kits. That all ended in the mid 80's to the early 90's. It got to where TV picture tubes were costing more than a new TV of the same specs. As far as vacuum tubes, good luck finding the rear old tubes used in high-end military transceivers used in WW 2 and Korea. And old tubes used in short-wave radios are hard to get now as well.
8-Bit guy is back! I need to get used to that blue mosaic wall background, but.... 8-Bit Buy is back! Yes!
I think I can adjust to the blue mosaic ... it's the shelves behind his head I find horribly distracting
Wow, what a psychedelic background in the new studio
It's pretty distracting in this state
I'm sure once it's covered in shelves it will look great.
its seizure inducing
@@JasonOFlaherty It's distracting here in Pennsylvania too.
@@mrb5217 haha
I remember being a kid in the 00’s and even then, these types of things were sold. I loved looking at all the items. I miss the period when the internet existed but only when I was at home (more or less)
When I went out, I could only call or text. It meant I saw more people and had more real experiences.
I once drew a shopping centre map purely from memory when I was a teen. That’s how much I was at the local shopping centre.
The reason they didn't allow people to record inside stores and malls, it is because they didn't want people recording whether or not they had security cameras and where the cameras were located. It was about theft prevention.
I doubt it. It's not that difficult to just look around and memorize, especially given that back in those days they probably had even fewer cameras than today.
@@wurfyy things were different back then.
Holy cow yes I was very fortunate to grow up in last year's of 90s & Also so the customer can't sue the store fake a fall or something on tape.
@@iluminumfalcon8619 right!
You could literally walk around with a pad and write their locations down.
There wasn't actually any valid reason to prohibit camera usage. Only the most idiotic robbers would use an overt camera to case a store.
A new studio and a video just a month after your house was flooded? David’s a madlad!
huh
@@that2dollarbill863 His house got flooded
@@that2dollarbill863 his house got flooded
His house got flooded
@@that2dollarbill863 His house got flooded, after the Texas snow storm and power outages, I believe a pipe burst
I started in electronics in the late 70s. We had Lafayette Electronics, Radio Shack was everywhere, Dick Smith electronics which did not last long in the US, and myriad other electronics parts and components stores. Now, on-line is about the only place to get anything. I mourn their passing, specially Frys.
Thank you Mr. Bit Guy. This is my favorite video to which you have posted and I've literally watched it a dozen times. My first computer was a C64 which I purchased in 1985 and used it until 1991. I have to admit I still whish I still had it and the the peripherals I bought for it. I loved the bitter sweet sentimental connection this video gave to all of us nerds that grew up in the 80's ogling at the latest technology and got to dream of owning something so fantastic as what we could look and and touch while browsing at the stores. I can still remember how amazed I was watching the Christmas Commodore 64 demo at the local software store way back in 1985. I think I must have watched it at least a dozen times before going home from my moms grocery shopping trip and fantasized how I could obtain one of these machines.
I was born in 1970. During the '80s, one of the great things about going to electronic stores is that you can actually see (and touch) in real life, the devices shown in magazines and catalogs. It was kind of a "miracle" to see the actual device working. I miss the smell of those stores too.
I was born in 2005 and I remember the dying moments of a lot of stores. A lot were out by then but I still remember a few
I was a kid in the 90s and remember this experience. My mind was blown every time I went into an electronics store.
There is one big electronics store holding on in the UK called PC world but they shoot them selfs in the foot when I went there to get a new laptop they said they don't keep very many in store and I'd need to buy it online. So I have no reason to ever go there again and I didn't buy the Computor I wanted from them.
The part that stings the most, at least for me, is now there's nowhere to buy components locally. My kingdom for a ten cent ceramic capacitor.
I agree. However, with the advent of cheap online pricing you can now just order a selection of capacitors or what have you and have them on hand.
DigiKey and Mouser took their place. David even worked for Mouser.. he was ahead of the game. Places like MonoPrice and Startech specialized in telling you Chipsets and documenting obscure technical guts so you didn't have to do Teardowns to suss it out yourself and compare.
This. Until a few months ago we actually had a small electronics shop in the neighborhood. You could get just about any part. Heck, you could even check tubes (remember them) and get replacements. Sigh.
@@jasonk9779 That being said you now have to buy things in bulk even if you need just 1 or 2, and can't mix and match so can still mount up cost and a lot of wastage.
RIP Maplin.
RS are still around in the UK, but they have very few branches. Nowadays, you mostly have to hunt through sites like AliExpress to find a store that will let you buy just *ONE* component and not have a minimum order of 100 of them!
Part of the fun of electronic stores was coming in to make a simple purchase (like picking up a few blank tapes) and seeing everything else on display as you walked through the store to get to what you wanted. Even if you didn't end up buying anything else that day, seeing certain items got you excited for when you'd eventually come back after you started your summer job and got your first paycheck. Online shopping makes it very easy to search for exactly what you want and buy it without even checking out anything else.
Awesome video, sir!
A pity I didn't watch it before making my own one on the same topic, but I do share with you the helplessness for lack of media: these places were indeed kind of kept secret!
Keep up the great work.
This is the gen-x lament - similar to the way parents of gen-x used to fondly remember the small town grocer who knew them by name. Times change and now we are living in the nostalgia of our children’s generation.
Even a consumerist nightmare like a mall make us nostalgic. Nostalgia is a wild drug.
Nostalgia is not the whole takeaway. A non-tactile, private experience is a social & psych change. We buy everything on Amazon, sit on the couch, and interact with nobody but the UPS guy? That is a major shift.
Not all nostalgia is false. I recently found a butcher with great products that's almost the same price as the grocery store. It's a vastly superior experience, and benefits the community, unlike Amazon.
Even gen z kids miss stuff like this. Even though our local mall was dying around us, it was still a popular place for kids to hang out. You used to be able go to places like books a million, GameStop, toys r us, brookstone, etc. to find some decent electronic novelties and toys. You still went to the movie theatre and snuck into the movies without paying. Now all of us are stuck in our homes. Most of the stores in the mall are closed except TJ Maxx, Macy’s, JcPennys, and some sports store.
Many Local Game Stores are still run like thoes old mom and pop groceries. Go hang out regularly and they'll learn your name and greet you warmly when you come in (I own a LGS so we try).
As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I can tell you that shopping as a kid / teenager was a lot more fun than it is in the 2020s. The "experience" is light years ahead of shopping online, and it is sad that it is gone forever.
*Everything* was more fun. Life was an adventure every day. You didn't know anything unless you left your house and explored.
@@aestheticstorm now adventures are done online
knowledge and technical details were rarer back then, the amount of knowledge and data at the touch of a finger now is amazing.
one reason the orient has exploded with technology, powerful computers, good design software, and internets.
back in the 80s the lucky few or people in the industry had BBS and access to company and colleague knowledge.
even collecting technical books was a challenge and expensive. (now ebooks etc are abundant online)
mid 90s the internet gave anybody with the tools the means the connect and explore.
You can’t beat the smell of electronic circuit boards and all the heat being generated by hundreds of receivers, CD players, tape decks, televisions, VCRs and car stereos. It was a sight and smell to behold.
Quite right, but the present is not so bleak as it may seem. Today, a decent offline audio store carrying three dozen of obscure high end brands is a far, far more interesting place than the chain stores of the 80s. Or crate-digging for vinyl records. Or the arduino-diy stores that look like "robot wars" arenas.
When I moved from Texas to New England about 15 years ago, the first thing I began to miss was Fry's. Fortunately in Needham Massachusetts there's a place called You-do-it Electronics Center that can meet most of my needs. It's still there and it's going strong. But it can't take the place in my heart that Fry's had.
Wow, thanks for that - great video! What a nice trip down memory lane, in that you noted a lot of the experiences from back then. I was a teenager in the mid 80’s so I remember it very well. Roanoke, Va’s Valley Mall was very much like the one you described. Babbages was always one of my favorite stores, and that is where I bought a majority of the software for my Commodore 128. BEST was also a great place to shop.
I can also remember when I was younger walking into these electronics stores and even though a certain percentage of the employees were just there as part-time workers etc., a good amount were hobbyist or enthusiast and could answer questions. The past few times I’ve gone to some of the remaining electronics stores like Best Buy etc., not only do the staff seem completely uninformed about their products, nobody seems in the least bit interested in trying to answer any questions.
They are, however, interested in selling useless crap like extended warranties and overpriced HDMI cables.
LOL
Absolutely spot on. People now are just terribly boring to the point that you wouldn't want to get to know them.
KPI obsessed clones.
@@maidenthe80sla We did had brick and motor stores for electronic parts at one time. Radio Shack was one of them. But that was probably in part of back in the day, when something electronic breaks or had something burn up inside of it. You where more inclined to get it repaired, then to throw it out and buy a new one.
For $8.00 an hour, do you blame them?
I miss going into the electronics stores and just browsing the shelves and shelves of big-box games, reading all the descriptions, looking at the pictures. The clerks knew you weren't going to buy shit, but they chatted with you anyway. Finally, one day you saved up enough for that copy of Daggerfall, and took it home to delve into the world of adventure.
I’m a high schooler and Daggerfall is my favorite TES game. However, I prefer the Unity version as the controls are much easier to handle. I have played the original game though.
great explanation, very interesting learning about USA 80's from Italy. I really like your channel. Davide
I know it's over 2 years old, but man, you dusted a cobweb off of my brain when you brought up Montgomery Ward. I forgot that was even a thing.
My Montgomery Ward sold personal computers at one time.
In the trailing years of Radio Shack's life, they actually turned into Cell Phone stores. Their main income was from selling cell phone plans for all the various companies. And if you tried to get a job there during this time, the most important aspect was whether you were a good salesman. They didn't care one bit about whether you knew electronics.
For probably the last decade of Radio Shack's existence, I never had a need to go there and when I did, since I didn't need a cell phone or accessories for my phone, it didn't have much to offer. The most recent fond memories of Radio Shack that I have are all the way back to the era when they had the "Internet center" at the center of the store and you could use the Internet on the computer. It was DirecWay Satellite, which sucks today but in 1999 compared with dial-up, it was amazing to use.
can confirm, worked at radioshack in early-mid 2000s in it's final "hay day" years before all the closings and inevitable bankruptcy in early 2010s. it could have survived as a cell phone store even as that's what mattered, the market for electronic components had dwindled and more viable online anyways. what was a killer is the structure of the company and they couldn't outlive internal lawsuits.
They made a HUGE mistake in restructuring along with just typical treatment of employees like garbage. Policy was never to pay over minimum wage and encourage income through "spiffs" which was $5-15 for every cellphone sold. A busy store with some good skills could get you $5 bucks extra an hour for sure, not bad but on average pay would work out to maybe $6/hr over like $5.15.
Then for managers, they were required to work Mon-Sat, 6 days a week, 48 hours minimum. BUT they restructured the business at some point in late 90s to a system that classified store managers as just assistants and regional managers as store manager, kind of like a "multi-store manager" in an attempt to lower pay offered to actual store managers saying "well our stores are small, you have staff of less than 5 people typically, sooo you're not really a true manager"
They did not realize this also meant they were in a classification now that required overtime pay unlike most management roles. For probably half a decade they litigated and semi-successfully delayed court decisions with extra filings and such but what they did was just flat out illegal. Now to make matters worse they continued the practice all through these years just adding on millions of hours of overtime due ANNND the best part is they started to fire managers as soon as they found out they were signed onto these class action lawsuits creating hundreds of more lawsuits for wrongful termination.
In the end the hundreds of millions owed in stolen wages and wrongful termination ended them as those very vocal and strong facing practices of "our employees dont matter" also meant they weren't selling anything and couldn't cover the loses and they went under.