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.
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.
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
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.
@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 ;) )
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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...
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)
This video made me super nostalgic for the 90s and made me sad that generations won't experience going to Malls after school on a Friday, then to dinner and movie. Felt like little adults for a few hours while we explored around.
I remember the mall in my small town didn't let people under 18 come into the mall unattended, I'm like you're telling the only demographic that actually still comes to this mall and spends money to leave; years later half the mall was vacant.
I'm a late 90s baby and I absolutely still had this experience growing up in the 2000s. And so did everyone I know. Don't worry yourself, those experiences never went away with time 👍
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just watched this a second time, love the effort put into this. Totally feel the pain of no media on these things, I worked in 2 of those stores and have no pictures to share either. It didn't occur to me at the time that anyone would ever care. To have a time machine to go back to 1985 and walk around NorthPark Mall...
I grew up in the nineties and still had a similar experience. I remember shopping at most of the stores in the video. I think it died out more recently than 8-Bit Guy realizes.
Another reason there'd be no photos is that people don't photograph things they expect to always be there. Photos, especially back in the days of film where every photo cost money, were taken of one-off events that happened or places you visited as a tourist, not of everyday things in your own town that everyone thought would always be there. Nobody spends time taking photos of supermarkets or bus stops for example.
A time machine to go back to 1985, huh? Thinking about the 80s, it’s not just the electronics stores that would be fun. Just how fun it would be to be lost and to ask someone for directions, and then the person pulls out a map and actually tries helping. These days I just get the response, “Don’t you have Google Maps?” As a millennial, I know it’s always better to ask someone older. It would be such a strange feeling to ask someone younger for directions and that younger person actually being helpful.
5:40 i'm sure there were hundreds of pictures taken over the years of the 80s of AT&T stores and other stores, but in Polaroid and 35mm form. I couldnt imagine these photos held much significance to those who took them and were thrown out after some time passed and they thinned out the pics kept in shoeboxes and drawers
@@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.
still would go to fry's even last year just to walk around and get a glimpse of the way it used to be. know nothings meant to stick around forever, but it still hurts when you realize its gone.
My Fry's was failing for a year before Covid hit, when they started doing consignment in early 2019. Coincidentally, the 2000 series RTX card I have right now is the same one I bought just a month before they started doing consignment, and I never seen a single GPU after that for almost 2 years until they went bankrupt.
Yeah really, @@EgoShredder. The Seasonal Flu is also known as one of Big Pharma's greatest cash cows around. The Year 2020 proved that there is no such thing as a legitimate Seasonal Flu.
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. 👍
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
@@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.
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.
"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.
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
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.
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.
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.
"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.
The online shopping has some downside to it. Sometimes you want to see the product in action, have a hands-on experience prior to the purchase. But with all the chinese stuff on Amazon, Ebay and stuff, you have a hard time picking anything to buy. Dude, even for good brands you have to do a little research reading opinions, reviews, watching videos and all that to come to a conclusion, and that still leaves a little hole in the heart. BAck in the day you would go to the store, see the product, feel it, get to know how it worked, how it performed, compare other options because they were right next to the one you were checking out and all that. Sometimes I really miss just going to the store, find the item, check it out, and bring it back home. Today, you spend a couple hours watching youtube videos about it and then order ir and wait 2-3 days for it to arrive.
Another reason. Ten years ago I bought my TV from a local supermarket back when they had a decent selection on display. Three months later the first one packed up. After a phone call I went in and without any quibbling they swapped it for a new one. So less it was less than 24 hours to get it replaced. How long would that have taken had I bought it mail order ?
If y.o.u.t.u.b.e.3d builds 3d functions picture how reality electronics devices work and function compare to other then right price and right support comming. The time obsolescence fake and faulty ads.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
God, did you give me a massive dose of nostalgia. The tour of your favorite mall stores was exactly like mine back in the day. Electronics, music, video, then ending with a bookstore or two. I will always treasure those times.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Good memories. I begged my parents for a Timex Sinclair computer for weeks. They had no idea what a home computer was. To shut me up they took me to Sears in Dallas and bought me one. I was fascinated by it. It was the beginning of a long and succesful engineering career.
...with a dash of "Company Man", a great YT channel that gets into why certain businesses succeed or fail. In fact I almost thought I was watching yet another "Company Man" video, especially when 8-Bit Guy went into the points for the electronics stores reasons for demise.
We've also got a few gadget stores here in the UK too but they're not that popular or common any more. I think the last one I heard of was a shop called Menkind that sold things they thought men would want in their mancaves.
Well, at least they used to be common in Asia. Was just a pale shadow left in Bangkok two years ago. Mostly iphone screen repair and phone covers left. Looking forward to check out the remains in Kathmandu and Tokyo later.
@@quadcopter Right now Tokyo is holding on but it is fading, i recommend to check it out while its still here. The markets are so cool to see both the old and the new stuff right near eachother
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!
I think the closest you can get to a similar feel would be a hardware store. I just had to visit one to pick of an extension cord and was tempted to wander to find other things to think of possible projects.
Well these 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.
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.
That's actually kind of sad really. Now that these places are gone, so is the history and culture of those places. They are only stuck in someone's head and once a few gens go by no will ever remember them ever again.
I ran into that with old Australian PC User magazines. I found a box in the garage to clear out, and assumed the publisher would have made back issues available online. Turns out no. In fact, I can't even find the publisher online. They've either gone bust or been bought up at some point in the last 25 years. As far as I can see, what I've got is all that survives from that period, so I'm scanning them as I read them before throwing them out. The first two had missing covers, so what ends up on archive.org will have "Cover Not Available" placeholders there.
I used to work at that Radio Shack at the Parks. I LOVED Radio Shack all through the 80s. And we loved going to and shopping at Incredible Universe which was also a concept store by Tandy Corporation. We bought so much stuff from there and it’s where I built out my laserdisc collection back in the day. One store you missed, but I think it was in the 90s, was McDuff’s Electronics, another Tandy owned store. I bought my first TV there using my Radio Shack employee discount.
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.
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.
David, when you reach our age (I'm 51) you begin to realize you are getting "old" because you begin to remember the wonderful experiences you had when you were young (like going to electronics stores, and record stores, and bookstores) and now realizing that those experiences are gone forever. It brings a little sadness, but I try to realize that it's really no different than all those things our parents used to tell us about their childhood that we thought at the time was useless and meaningless to us. So, I believe that those experiences we had are not really lost on the younger generation, but will simply be different for them than for us - the cost of progress as one might say. What really makes me sad is to realize that I won't be around in 100 years from now to be amazed at the further technological leaps and amazements that our world will have at that time. Thanks again for all the videos - I love watching your channel because it reminds me so much of my childhood as well. Keep up the good work, and I hope things are progressing well with your damaged home.
@@kekeke8988 The world certainly isn't a better place now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Even in terms of our technology, it hasn't been pure progress. Sure, our scientific knowledge continues to progress by leaps and bounds. But meanwhile, the quality of consumer technology continues to degrade. Not all change is progress.
@@kekeke8988 No, if anything its only sped up exponentially. Any credible futurist says the pace of change will only quicken. Whether or not that's for the better will always be subjective, as people age they often long for the nostalgia of their past or youth.
The last time I visited a Fry‘s was in 1998 near San Diego for buying a Palm III. But that’s only because we don’t have Fry‘s in Germany. I didn’t know they don’t exist anymore. We stilll have shops like this over here: Mediamarkt and Saturn. Let’s see how long…
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!
Ran out of solder recently. Dang! Can't go to the original Fry's in Sunnyvale and their very annoying and totally clueless sales force - and Steinway Grand Piano - to get a replacement and keep on going. I miss Fry's.
All we had where I live was a Radio Shack with clueless workers. If I need to replace a pot or cap or pin connectors I'm now SOL for the day and have to wait to get it in the mail. Probably from Mouser/etc electronics or if I'm lucky enough to find it cheap on Amazon or eBay. We could use a Micro Center in Northwest Florida too since we'll never get a Fry's now.
@@TheSeniorTaco You all need to find a well stocked electronics enthusiast or similarly stocked mom and pop electronics manufacturer/servicer in your area where you could get a resistor, and many other components, same day free of charge (or, at most, actual cost), all you have to do is call ahead and make the drive over to their place! Surely we are not all that rare as I know that I have thousands of different component types and values on hand, both through hole and surface mount in various sizes and ratings, for projects as I have been in electronics as a hobbyist since I was a preteen 9 year old buying his first soldering iron in 1980 and I passionately hate having to wait for a mail order to arrive a few days to a week later for anything less than an expensive or specialty component (by the time one pays for overnight service your could have purchased 50 of each value 1/4W resistor in the 0-Ohm to 10-Megohm E24 series just for what you spent on shipping that one part overnight!). I often help out our local amateur radio community and other enthusiasts and makers in my area who need a missing component or were otherwise prepared to order a component online only to find it back ordered from the usual sources and were faced with the indignity of paying through the nose to order that one missing component from another vendor and having to pay the minimum order penalty plus shipping for a $0.05 part! I seldom even bother to charge those I know for small quantities of “jellybean” components like low wattage resistors, small value capacitors, diodes, transistors, connectors and housings, crimp pins, etc. as their dollar value is often mere pennies when bought in modest bulk quantities (e.g. 100, 1000, or 10,000). @meritamity It is a shame that I don’t still live in the Gainesville, FL area (I now live far closer to Gainesville, GA than FL) or I would help you out with components, but I left Gainesville and moved to Orlando in ‘93 to continue my education at UCF, then moved several more times and later (2005) to upstate South Carolina, where I presently live.
OMG thats exactly how i feel. In the '80's and 90's i used to fly up to San Francisco on business in Sunnyvale (from New Zealand). Since I worked for trimble.com (who were less than a mile from Frys in Sunnyvale) i would often go to Fry's. In those days it was fantastic including that robotic grand piano. then after the '90's the sales staff were definitely clueless and i really miss the good old days in there.
Wait, are they gone? I admit I haven't been in many years. But I was planning to go soon because I need a 5.1 speaker system and I couldn't find anything decent online, Best Buy doesn't even have 5.1 sound systems (just 2.1). Where am I going to find a 5.1 sound system?
@@meritamity I spent so much time in Radio Shack purchasing components that I applied for a job there. They never responded to my application. So I ended up as an engineer at Google instead.
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.
This video is simultaneously heartwarming (because of all the memories) and heartbreaking (because these places are nothing _but_ memories now) 🥲 Thanks for all the work you put into this amazing time capsule David 🤓
Great video. I did not know you were in my area. I live in Mansfield, 54 years old. Thanks for the memories. I very much miss the stores in the malls, such awesome memories.
Dang! I was literally stunned when you flipped through the Radio Shack catalog and just about everything in there was now in our smart phones. I think you really hit the nail on the head.
@@haweater1555 Who needs laser pointers nowadays? As the presentation comes from the computer, the computer can do the highlighting. Oh well. Cat owners, of course, because cats just love to chase the little red dot. A great way to maximize the cat's physical exercise while minimizing the physical exercise for the owner. However, a laser can do more than just pointing at things - it can also be used to measure the diatce to that thing. patents.google.com/patent/WO2004036246A1/en And here's the add-on version for a phone: www.amazon.de/-/en/Ryobi-Phone-Works-RPW-Distance/dp/B012FS9CNK Too expensive if you ask me; a decent stand-alone version can be bought for less. Fun fact: I think I even owned a phone with a built-in laser (to help the auto focus when taking photographs in the dark). This laser was too weak to be used as a laser pointer, possibly for safety reasons (because if would of course turn on when you try to take a portait photograph in the dark).
@@KairuHakubi Very much indeed. I have an HP-41 emulator on my phone...but I very much prefer my real HP-41. The original HP keyboard has never been surpassed,b and it gives the device unprecedented efficiency in daily use. While the 41 us primitive by today's standards, its rather limited functionality is actually beneficial for me. Punching in an ad hoc program is much easier and faster than on a HP-48. It's a tool tailored to one job, perfectly. Unlike a modern phone, which is tailored to...nothing, really. Even using a modern phone as a phone is actually less pleasant and efficient than the clamshell phones from 20 years ago.
@@klausstock8020 yeah i was all for smaller, more portable devices, but smartphones dropped the ball in every regard. locked-down, hard to use, hard to hook up a bigger screen and mouse and keyboard to use them like a normal computer when you have to.. do anything... fuck it's even hard to make phone calls, all the buttons are so unresponsive. and can you edit any of those functions? change the swipe sensitivity? diagnose why it goes black sometimes when you answer? of course not. you can't even take the battery out anymore. What we WANTED was bigger but also lighter laptops. hell for a while it looked like phones would go away entirely and people would migrate to like msn messenger. then they killed that Integrated gps, rotation-sensors, voice to text, all of that stuff has been legitimately advanced and I'm sort of happy for it, but that could just as easily have been worked into computers. real computers.
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.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. As a child of the 70's and 80s who also visited many of these stores, even into the 90's, it was a lot more fun back then. I visited Fry's up until last year (in Indianapolis) and they were so done. I remember when they had everything and were crowded. Bygone days.
interestingly in Switzerland there is a store called Conrad, when I went in there I felt like I went back in time to late 80s or early 90s radio shack. It was so amazing.
There used to be a Conrad decades ago in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, but from what I understood they have always been a mail order company with a few store fronts as extra. Their niche wasn't that they sold consumer electronics, but they sold the actual electronics. So the components, instruments, tools and everything that had to do with electronics. My brother who studied electric engineering got a lot of stuff there for his projects.Conrad still exists as an online store.
Personally, the fall of Fry's Electronics was a blow. I loved their stores and I would shop there a few times a month for random things. Usually gaming or pc parts. I just loved spending time walking around checking things out before I walked over to the cashier. Oh well...
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.
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!
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.
Very interesting and very true to everything you packed into this video! I was an 80s Teen- Twenties and I was baffled at the lack of photos available on the internet also when I was looking for pictures of the famous Sherman Oaks Galleria in Sherman Oaks California. Because it was so famous and used in a lot of movies and TV shows there is probably more pictures available than a lot of other malls but still there are not a lot compared to how long it was open before they destroyed it, in my opinion, by turning it into an Outdoor Mall. I was also taken aback in the same way by the lack of photos from the 70s and 80s available for the Northridge Fashion Mall in Northridge California, a very popular mall for many years. We all use technology nowadays and it is good in many ways, but I would gladly give up my Smart Phone and all the other Tech for the Social Benefits and sometimes annoyances of shopping the old fashioned way and seeing and meeting real people a lot more, the way it was in the past. I think Tech has assisted in the world's loss of compassion and humanity. We have lost the benefits of being together.. Thanks for the great video!!
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.
The magic of being a teen in the 80s, going to the mall with friends, hanging out at Aladdin's Castle arcade and just wandering the mall... my kids never got to experience that... and my kids were pretty much the last kids that got to stroll the aisles of Toys R Us as kids... at least they got that.
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.
Yeah, that's a distinct negative to this new studio set I'm afraid. Won't stop me enjoying the content or anything, but it's definitely distracting. Maybe I just need to get used to it.
A similar thing happened to Reverend Lovejoy. He came to Springfield with a lot of hope. He was not counting on one individual named Ned Flanders. He called and said "Reverend, I was at a disco and I was dancing and then, the buttocks of another man touched my buttocks."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The speed at which you rebounded from absolute crisis is amazing. It's great to have you back on youtube, dude
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.
With ruthless efficiency, he's back just over a month later. With a new studio
Shows his dedication
stfu
@@pandasdreamlygon who hurt you?
@@pandasdreamlygon Who hurt you?
@@pandasdreamlygon who hurt you?
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.
Yes. Which is far, far, FAR better than having to deal with people in meatspace.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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)
This video made me super nostalgic for the 90s and made me sad that generations won't experience going to Malls after school on a Friday, then to dinner and movie. Felt like little adults for a few hours while we explored around.
this comment made me super nostalgic before i even watched the video
This comment makes you ALL old. And I'm older.
I remember the mall in my small town didn't let people under 18 come into the mall unattended, I'm like you're telling the only demographic that actually still comes to this mall and spends money to leave; years later half the mall was vacant.
I'm a late 90s baby and I absolutely still had this experience growing up in the 2000s. And so did everyone I know. Don't worry yourself, those experiences never went away with time 👍
The 90’s were the best.
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
Just watched this a second time, love the effort put into this. Totally feel the pain of no media on these things, I worked in 2 of those stores and have no pictures to share either. It didn't occur to me at the time that anyone would ever care. To have a time machine to go back to 1985 and walk around NorthPark Mall...
I grew up in the nineties and still had a similar experience. I remember shopping at most of the stores in the video. I think it died out more recently than 8-Bit Guy realizes.
Or better yet See the old School Radio Shack Tandy Electronics Computers
Another reason there'd be no photos is that people don't photograph things they expect to always be there. Photos, especially back in the days of film where every photo cost money, were taken of one-off events that happened or places you visited as a tourist, not of everyday things in your own town that everyone thought would always be there. Nobody spends time taking photos of supermarkets or bus stops for example.
A time machine to go back to 1985, huh? Thinking about the 80s, it’s not just the electronics stores that would be fun. Just how fun it would be to be lost and to ask someone for directions, and then the person pulls out a map and actually tries helping. These days I just get the response, “Don’t you have Google Maps?” As a millennial, I know it’s always better to ask someone older. It would be such a strange feeling to ask someone younger for directions and that younger person actually being helpful.
5:40 i'm sure there were hundreds of pictures taken over the years of the 80s of AT&T stores and other stores, but in Polaroid and 35mm form. I couldnt imagine these photos held much significance to those who took them and were thrown out after some time passed and they thinned out the pics kept in shoeboxes and drawers
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.
still would go to fry's even last year just to walk around and get a glimpse of the way it used to be. know nothings meant to stick around forever, but it still hurts when you realize its gone.
And then covid hit
My Fry's was failing for a year before Covid hit, when they started doing consignment in early 2019. Coincidentally, the 2000 series RTX card I have right now is the same one I bought just a month before they started doing consignment, and I never seen a single GPU after that for almost 2 years until they went bankrupt.
frys was run by assholes
@@davincent98 Or as it was originally known.........the seasonal flu.
Yeah really, @@EgoShredder. The Seasonal Flu is also known as one of Big Pharma's greatest cash cows around. The Year 2020 proved that there is no such thing as a legitimate Seasonal Flu.
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. 👍
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.
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.
...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.
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.
"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.
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 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.
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!!!
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.
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.
That is one thing I like about your content. You're not a "modern technology bad" kind of person, you seem to actually be logical.
Good tech is good tech no matter how old.
Fax man
BRUH He delete his post
@@Sub2RazE but why, would you do that ?
Hardware generally improves over time, software on the other hand seems to go through cycles.
I really miss Fry's. When their electrical components were well-stocked, you could find just about anything for your projects.
"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.
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
The online shopping has some downside to it. Sometimes you want to see the product in action, have a hands-on experience prior to the purchase. But with all the chinese stuff on Amazon, Ebay and stuff, you have a hard time picking anything to buy. Dude, even for good brands you have to do a little research reading opinions, reviews, watching videos and all that to come to a conclusion, and that still leaves a little hole in the heart. BAck in the day you would go to the store, see the product, feel it, get to know how it worked, how it performed, compare other options because they were right next to the one you were checking out and all that.
Sometimes I really miss just going to the store, find the item, check it out, and bring it back home. Today, you spend a couple hours watching youtube videos about it and then order ir and wait 2-3 days for it to arrive.
" and that still leaves a little hole in the heart."
SO accurate!!!
Sometimes you need the item immediately and having to wait for shipping is the worst.
Perhaps there is a You Tube video!
Another reason. Ten years ago I bought my TV from a local supermarket back when they had a decent selection on display. Three months later the first one packed up. After a phone call I went in and without any quibbling they swapped it for a new one. So less it was less than 24 hours to get it replaced. How long would that have taken had I bought it mail order ?
If y.o.u.t.u.b.e.3d builds 3d functions picture how reality electronics devices work and function compare to other then right price and right support comming. The time obsolescence fake and faulty ads.
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 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)
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
"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 😔
God, did you give me a massive dose of nostalgia. The tour of your favorite mall stores was exactly like mine back in the day. Electronics, music, video, then ending with a bookstore or two. I will always treasure those times.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
Good memories. I begged my parents for a Timex Sinclair computer for weeks. They had no idea what a home computer was. To shut me up they took me to Sears in Dallas and bought me one. I was fascinated by it. It was the beginning of a long and succesful engineering career.
That was my 1st computer! The 1000. I sold it and bought a Commodore VIC-20, which was eventually replaced by a C64, which I had quite a while.
I am from Portugal, and the Timex Sinclair 1000 was my first computer, and maybe the most important one to me
Finally! The Dan Bell/8-Bit Guy cinematic universe has arrived!
Dan Bell is a lazy FF. "Retail Archeology" is a better version of Dan Bell.
...with a dash of "Company Man", a great YT channel that gets into why certain businesses succeed or fail. In fact I almost thought I was watching yet another "Company Man" video, especially when 8-Bit Guy went into the points for the electronics stores reasons for demise.
There is also Sal.
Benrith!
The crossover I didn't know I needed!
stores like this do actually still exist, just not really in the US. stores filled with crazy gadgets and electronics components are common in Asia.
We've also got a few gadget stores here in the UK too but they're not that popular or common any more. I think the last one I heard of was a shop called Menkind that sold things they thought men would want in their mancaves.
Well, at least they used to be common in Asia. Was just a pale shadow left in Bangkok two years ago. Mostly iphone screen repair and phone covers left. Looking forward to check out the remains in Kathmandu and Tokyo later.
@@quadcopter Right now Tokyo is holding on but it is fading, i recommend to check it out while its still here. The markets are so cool to see both the old and the new stuff right near eachother
JayCar in Aus/NZ is pretty close to what Radio Shack used to be. Can still get individual components and electronics kits.
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!
I think the closest you can get to a similar feel would be a hardware store. I just had to visit one to pick of an extension cord and was tempted to wander to find other things to think of possible projects.
It's full of need stuff for electricians, plumbers, remodlers, and gardeners, and it's all hands on!!
It helps to be able to see build and quality of project boxes and things that go in them, including seeing things that you didn't know existed.
Well these 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.
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
@@farmerfreakeasy 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.
It’s amazing how much we assume that someone else has media of places we once knew, like malls, but years later no one has it.
That's actually kind of sad really. Now that these places are gone, so is the history and culture of those places. They are only stuck in someone's head and once a few gens go by no will ever remember them ever again.
I ran into that with old Australian PC User magazines. I found a box in the garage to clear out, and assumed the publisher would have made back issues available online. Turns out no. In fact, I can't even find the publisher online. They've either gone bust or been bought up at some point in the last 25 years. As far as I can see, what I've got is all that survives from that period, so I'm scanning them as I read them before throwing them out. The first two had missing covers, so what ends up on archive.org will have "Cover Not Available" placeholders there.
Wow this was a depressing watch. Seeing things I owned while you flipped through those catalogs.
I used to work at that Radio Shack at the Parks. I LOVED Radio Shack all through the 80s. And we loved going to and shopping at Incredible Universe which was also a concept store by Tandy Corporation. We bought so much stuff from there and it’s where I built out my laserdisc collection back in the day. One store you missed, but I think it was in the 90s, was McDuff’s Electronics, another Tandy owned store. I bought my first TV there using my Radio Shack employee discount.
As a kid walking into Radio Shack..my imagination just exploded.
Radio Shack and Babbages were my favorite places! I used to get so excited going to either one of 'em!
I had a friend that was a manager of a radio shack. We gave him the nickname “chuck”
That background, my eyes 👀
yeah, he should replace white with a color that is closer to the blue we see
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.
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.
That comparison to what a cell phone can do and the items in the catalog was eye opening...
David, when you reach our age (I'm 51) you begin to realize you are getting "old" because you begin to remember the wonderful experiences you had when you were young (like going to electronics stores, and record stores, and bookstores) and now realizing that those experiences are gone forever. It brings a little sadness, but I try to realize that it's really no different than all those things our parents used to tell us about their childhood that we thought at the time was useless and meaningless to us. So, I believe that those experiences we had are not really lost on the younger generation, but will simply be different for them than for us - the cost of progress as one might say.
What really makes me sad is to realize that I won't be around in 100 years from now to be amazed at the further technological leaps and amazements that our world will have at that time.
Thanks again for all the videos - I love watching your channel because it reminds me so much of my childhood as well. Keep up the good work, and I hope things are progressing well with your damaged home.
Technology could always stagnate or go backwards. The world might not even be a better place in 100 years.
@@kekeke8988 The world certainly isn't a better place now than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
Even in terms of our technology, it hasn't been pure progress. Sure, our scientific knowledge continues to progress by leaps and bounds. But meanwhile, the quality of consumer technology continues to degrade.
Not all change is progress.
@@Jayce_Alexander I agree. America peaked around 1995. I have witnessed the steady decline since.
@@kekeke8988 No, if anything its only sped up exponentially. Any credible futurist says the pace of change will only quicken. Whether or not that's for the better will always be subjective, as people age they often long for the nostalgia of their past or youth.
I went to Fry’s shortly before it closed forever. It was a sad, spooky, darkened shadow of what it was a few years ago.
Same. There were maybe two or three cars in the parking lot? And only the first few shelves had any items on them.
I miss going in when they opened and picking out all the parts for a new PC and have it built while getting lunch.
The last time I visited a Fry‘s was in 1998 near San Diego for buying a Palm III. But that’s only because we don’t have Fry‘s in Germany. I didn’t know they don’t exist anymore. We stilll have shops like this over here: Mediamarkt and Saturn. Let’s see how long…
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!
Ran out of solder recently. Dang! Can't go to the original Fry's in Sunnyvale and their very annoying and totally clueless sales force - and Steinway Grand Piano - to get a replacement and keep on going. I miss Fry's.
All we had where I live was a Radio Shack with clueless workers. If I need to replace a pot or cap or pin connectors I'm now SOL for the day and have to wait to get it in the mail. Probably from Mouser/etc electronics or if I'm lucky enough to find it cheap on Amazon or eBay. We could use a Micro Center in Northwest Florida too since we'll never get a Fry's now.
@@TheSeniorTaco You all need to find a well stocked electronics enthusiast or similarly stocked mom and pop electronics manufacturer/servicer in your area where you could get a resistor, and many other components, same day free of charge (or, at most, actual cost), all you have to do is call ahead and make the drive over to their place! Surely we are not all that rare as I know that I have thousands of different component types and values on hand, both through hole and surface mount in various sizes and ratings, for projects as I have been in electronics as a hobbyist since I was a preteen 9 year old buying his first soldering iron in 1980 and I passionately hate having to wait for a mail order to arrive a few days to a week later for anything less than an expensive or specialty component (by the time one pays for overnight service your could have purchased 50 of each value 1/4W resistor in the 0-Ohm to 10-Megohm E24 series just for what you spent on shipping that one part overnight!). I often help out our local amateur radio community and other enthusiasts and makers in my area who need a missing component or were otherwise prepared to order a component online only to find it back ordered from the usual sources and were faced with the indignity of paying through the nose to order that one missing component from another vendor and having to pay the minimum order penalty plus shipping for a $0.05 part! I seldom even bother to charge those I know for small quantities of “jellybean” components like low wattage resistors, small value capacitors, diodes, transistors, connectors and housings, crimp pins, etc. as their dollar value is often mere pennies when bought in modest bulk quantities (e.g. 100, 1000, or 10,000).
@meritamity It is a shame that I don’t still live in the Gainesville, FL area (I now live far closer to Gainesville, GA than FL) or I would help you out with components, but I left Gainesville and moved to Orlando in ‘93 to continue my education at UCF, then moved several more times and later (2005) to upstate South Carolina, where I presently live.
OMG thats exactly how i feel. In the '80's and 90's i used to fly up to San Francisco on business in Sunnyvale (from New Zealand). Since I worked for trimble.com (who were less than a mile from Frys in Sunnyvale) i would often go to Fry's. In those days it was fantastic including that robotic grand piano. then after the '90's the sales staff were definitely clueless and i really miss the good old days in there.
Wait, are they gone? I admit I haven't been in many years. But I was planning to go soon because I need a 5.1 speaker system and I couldn't find anything decent online, Best Buy doesn't even have 5.1 sound systems (just 2.1). Where am I going to find a 5.1 sound system?
@@meritamity I spent so much time in Radio Shack purchasing components that I applied for a job there. They never responded to my application. So I ended up as an engineer at Google instead.
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.
This video is simultaneously heartwarming (because of all the memories) and heartbreaking (because these places are nothing _but_ memories now) 🥲 Thanks for all the work you put into this amazing time capsule David 🤓
I agree!
Seconded!
Great video. I did not know you were in my area. I live in Mansfield, 54 years old. Thanks for the memories. I very much miss the stores in the malls, such awesome memories.
Dang! I was literally stunned when you flipped through the Radio Shack catalog and just about everything in there was now in our smart phones. I think you really hit the nail on the head.
Even pocket flashlights are obselete. I bet there is a phone out there with a built in laser pointer.
@@haweater1555 Who needs laser pointers nowadays? As the presentation comes from the computer, the computer can do the highlighting.
Oh well. Cat owners, of course, because cats just love to chase the little red dot. A great way to maximize the cat's physical exercise while minimizing the physical exercise for the owner.
However, a laser can do more than just pointing at things - it can also be used to measure the diatce to that thing. patents.google.com/patent/WO2004036246A1/en
And here's the add-on version for a phone: www.amazon.de/-/en/Ryobi-Phone-Works-RPW-Distance/dp/B012FS9CNK
Too expensive if you ask me; a decent stand-alone version can be bought for less.
Fun fact: I think I even owned a phone with a built-in laser (to help the auto focus when taking photographs in the dark). This laser was too weak to be used as a laser pointer, possibly for safety reasons (because if would of course turn on when you try to take a portait photograph in the dark).
some of us still use real computers, and prefer dedicated machines for portable use.
@@KairuHakubi Very much indeed. I have an HP-41 emulator on my phone...but I very much prefer my real HP-41. The original HP keyboard has never been surpassed,b and it gives the device unprecedented efficiency in daily use.
While the 41 us primitive by today's standards, its rather limited functionality is actually beneficial for me. Punching in an ad hoc program is much easier and faster than on a HP-48. It's a tool tailored to one job, perfectly. Unlike a modern phone, which is tailored to...nothing, really. Even using a modern phone as a phone is actually less pleasant and efficient than the clamshell phones from 20 years ago.
@@klausstock8020 yeah i was all for smaller, more portable devices, but smartphones dropped the ball in every regard. locked-down, hard to use, hard to hook up a bigger screen and mouse and keyboard to use them like a normal computer when you have to.. do anything... fuck it's even hard to make phone calls, all the buttons are so unresponsive. and can you edit any of those functions? change the swipe sensitivity? diagnose why it goes black sometimes when you answer? of course not. you can't even take the battery out anymore.
What we WANTED was bigger but also lighter laptops. hell for a while it looked like phones would go away entirely and people would migrate to like msn messenger. then they killed that
Integrated gps, rotation-sensors, voice to text, all of that stuff has been legitimately advanced and I'm sort of happy for it, but that could just as easily have been worked into computers. real computers.
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.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. As a child of the 70's and 80s who also visited many of these stores, even into the 90's, it was a lot more fun back then. I visited Fry's up until last year (in Indianapolis) and they were so done. I remember when they had everything and were crowded. Bygone days.
I think those Fry's brothers got old and tired. Should have sold out like their dad did with the grocery business.
What a trip down memory lane for this old nerd who used to mall-crawl to these wonderful stores. Thanks for posting this. New subscriber!
interestingly in Switzerland there is a store called Conrad, when I went in there I felt like I went back in time to late 80s or early 90s radio shack. It was so amazing.
It's probably the last electronics store, unfortunately the next one's is over 100km away from me.
There used to be a Conrad decades ago in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, but from what I understood they have always been a mail order company with a few store fronts as extra. Their niche wasn't that they sold consumer electronics, but they sold the actual electronics. So the components, instruments, tools and everything that had to do with electronics. My brother who studied electric engineering got a lot of stuff there for his projects.Conrad still exists as an online store.
@@Bstingnl That's the problem with most electronics stores, they just sell smartphones and consumer electronics but no components
Yeah we have that in germany, too. Amazing! One store near my work in "Frankfurt am Main" and one where we have our meetings near "Essen"
@@Haselui Why do you put place names in quotes?
I will always miss electronic stores. They always had a cool nerdy vibe to them and it was always fun to look around at the the fun stuff you wanted.
Personally, the fall of Fry's Electronics was a blow. I loved their stores and I would shop there a few times a month for random things. Usually gaming or pc parts. I just loved spending time walking around checking things out before I walked over to the cashier. Oh well...
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 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!
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.
It was always a treat when mom would let me loose in Radio Shack at the mall while she went clothes shopping.
I usually snuck over to Spencer's where I was not allowed to go, and then my parents would find me.
Very interesting and very true to everything you packed into this video! I was an 80s Teen- Twenties and I was baffled at the lack of photos available on the internet also when I was looking for pictures of the famous Sherman Oaks Galleria in Sherman Oaks California. Because it was so famous and used in a lot of movies and TV shows there is probably more pictures available than a lot of other malls but still there are not a lot compared to how long it was open before they destroyed it, in my opinion, by turning it into an Outdoor Mall. I was also taken aback in the same way by the lack of photos from the 70s and 80s available for the Northridge Fashion Mall in Northridge California, a very popular mall for many years. We all use technology nowadays and it is good in many ways, but I would gladly give up my Smart Phone and all the other Tech for the Social Benefits and sometimes annoyances of shopping the old fashioned way and seeing and meeting real people a lot more, the way it was in the past. I think Tech has assisted in the world's loss of compassion and humanity. We have lost the benefits of being together.. Thanks for the great video!!
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.
"QWERT"??
Come on, man. Don't leave us hangin' like that...
But Y?
Y not?
Y M C A?
The magic of being a teen in the 80s, going to the mall with friends, hanging out at Aladdin's Castle arcade and just wandering the mall... my kids never got to experience that... and my kids were pretty much the last kids that got to stroll the aisles of Toys R Us as kids... at least they got that.
Today if you go to the mall you are risking your life, especially on a weekend evening!
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.
It's great to see you here again, but that background lattice is a major source of eyestrain.
Have to agree. It’s really messing with my head
Yeah, that's a distinct negative to this new studio set I'm afraid. Won't stop me enjoying the content or anything, but it's definitely distracting. Maybe I just need to get used to it.
Yeah what was he thinking?
maybe „ let‘s try something new“?
I thought it was a blue/green screen effect LOL
Ahhh, the 80s. Before the weight of the world crushed all my hopes and dreams.
Unless you lived in Western Europe
Before reality turned my life into one endless to-do list.
A similar thing happened to Reverend Lovejoy. He came to Springfield with a lot of hope. He was not counting on one individual named Ned Flanders.
He called and said "Reverend, I was at a disco and I was dancing and then, the buttocks of another man touched my buttocks."
The decade of the minimum wage jobs
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.
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.