I recently took my son on a "GameStop run" to sell our super old PS4. He's 7 and never been to a store with video games before. So we jumped in the car and arrived at the store about 30 min north of Seattle just as the sun was setting. In the window were two kids in Taekwondo uniforms. Both were super nice to a younger kid and immediately let him play and gave him pro tips on how to do slide turns. We then sold the console for $50 and he immediately wanted to use the money to buy a giant Eevee squishmallow that was next to the checkout line. What can you do? :) Now he tells me the story as "remember that time we bought my Eevee and those karate kids gave me a quarter".<p>Having real places is still awesome. I know the finances don't really scale, but shoutout to Lynnwood GameStop for keeping it real out there.<p>And RIP RadioShack. You always had a hard drive when we needed one to reinstall windows during a lan party. <i>holds up a glass</i>
Sad to see that the last two in Orlando are dead now too.<p>I miss Radio Shack, particularly when they were a bit more "component based". As a general electronics store, they were almost always strictly worse than any of the big box stores, but if you needed something like a resistor or individual LEDs, it was great to be able to be able to drive over there and find something. I live in NYC now, and fortunately we still have Micro Center which is still fun, though I do worry that it might go the way of Fry's Electronics soon enough.<p>I understand it, it's really hard to compete with Amazon in today's environment, and I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store, I buy online too, and fundamentally these are for-profit businesses and I don't feel any obligation to give them charity.<p>Still, seeing Radio Shack and Fry's dying does make me a little sad. When I first moved to Dallas, one of my favorite things to do on the weekend was go to Fry's, look around the store, and buy a cheap DVD of some anime that I hadn't heard of.
If anyone is curious, there are definitely a few stores left with the RadioShack brand, though most if not all of them are independent of any centralized organization: <a href="https://www.radioshack.com/locations" rel="nofollow">https://www.radioshack.com/locations</a>
I've finally lived long enough to both remember when Radio Shack was mocked as low-quality, staffed by teens who knew nothing... and now to watch that same company given a hagiography.<p>"It was the place to go if you needed..." sounds a lot better than, "It was often the only game in town, and woeful at that," I guess. I still remember them trying to sell Monster cables for amounts of money that were downright comical.
Weird to see my home county pop up on HN. As soon as I saw RadioShack + Maryland I immediately pictured exactly where this was on rt 4. I have a distinct memory of going to this very store to buy a PS2 internet adapter and an ethernet cable back in the early 2000s. It was also my go to for anything electronics related.<p>It was always nice to visit back home (including this year) and see that this store was still around. It will certainly be missed :(
They will be missed. I still have my multimeter, solder, and alarm clock from there. I wish home hardware stores had a component cabinet like RS did, always good for an impulse buy project. Still remember a few that I did out of make magazine with their parts.
I'm within months of my 60's, have been a developer since 1984, and Radio Shack is where it started. My family moved when I was 1/2 way through high school, of course in the Summer. So I had no network of friends, and wandered into a Radio Shack with the ubiquitous TRS-80 on display. Over the course of the summer, the 1 employee there and I became friends enough to where he'd boot up the BASIC interpreter, and let me type in programs.<p>That was my start. Went on to consume as much info as I could; lots of it from BYTE magazine, took all the programming classes I was allowed in my final 2 years of high school, continued to get a CS degree, and have been programming ever since.<p>But RS was the genesis.
My only retail job ever was at Radioshack back in 2009, I lasted about 2 months before landing an office IT job..<p>It was barely a shell of its former self then.. the only training I remember was being told to upsell batteries with every transaction..<p>I didn't make it long enough to be trained on selling cell phone plans which was the only way to make commission...<p>I don't understand the mindset of someone willing to be sold a cellphone plan during a random radioshack visit enough to work with them =p<p>Black Friday was during my short time there, I wasnt overly familiar with our inventory or locations of things, and fielding questions like "What gift should I get my grandson?"<p>I was anxious pretty much every minute that I worked there.
May I never experience retail again.
Yeah I can imagine.<p>When I was young I would go to the electronics store and give them a whole list of components I needed for a project. 2 resistors of 5 cents each, some capacitors, etc. The guys would spend 20 minutes scurrying up all the stuff, coming back to say they didn't have 220 ohm, would 2x 100 ohm do? Stuff like that. They spend half an hour on me for a total bill of 10 bucks. I don't know how that was sustainable then but it sure as hell isn't now.<p>Now I just buy components in bulk. Need a resistor? I just buy 100 of them. Though I don't really tend to use individual components so much anymore. ESP modules can replace a lot and they cost peanuts. If I need something complex I just design a PCB and send it to a PCB manufacturer in China and get 10 of them.<p>We still have an independent shop like this here in my city in Spain but another one closed up shop during the pandemic. I don't know how long this one will continue. It's a pain. But on the other hand they often don't have what I need so I tend to order online a lot too. But for tools it's nice to look at them in real life before buying them, or to be able to go there if I need something right now.
It's too bad that Radio Shack misunderstood the threat posed by Amazon. To get a bit ahead of myself, Best Buy did NOT misunderstand the threat, and they're still around. Anyway, Radio Shack went all-in on impulse buys. They focused on putting stores in shopping malls near entrances/exits, and filled their store window with silly gadgets like plasma balls and robots. They also tried to become a cellphone store, for some reason. Best Buy survived by picking the worst locations. In industrial parks, near highways, land nobody else wanted. They properly realized that Amazon's weakness was their two-day shipping. If you need something <i>right now</i>, you're willing to drive 30min-1hr to get it.<p>A closer competitor to Radio Shack was Fry's Electronics, which also located their stores on non-prime real estate, but their infamously bad customer service [1], embezzlement losses, and poor inventory choices doomed them.<p>[1] - shout out to the Fry's employee at the Freemont location who got in a huffy fit when I decided that the price for an oscilloscope probe was too high, and tried to argue with me and say he couldn't remove the item when I wouldn't insert my card to pay for it. Really A+ attitude there bud.
There's something of a parallel history for Radioshack up here in Canada.<p>Radioshack's were everywhere once upon a time. As things became less repairable and less repaired, the components racks gradually shrank and the stores pivoted to selling a variety of other electronic junk: video games, cell phones, toys, etc.. Their prices were consistently higher than the competition and what they stocked was frequently of low quality.<p>In the early 2000's the Canadian franchises were bought out, and re-branded as "The Source". I asked a store manager why they'd turned their back on such a well recognized brand for "The Source", and he told me that the Radioshack brand was indeed well known, but associated with junk and high prices. I couldn't argue with that. They kept selling the same stuff at the same prices and quickly earned the same reputation Radioshack had. By this point the components racks were long gone and they were no longer even a good place to find adapters, cables, etc.. Somehow, "The Source" stores continued to persist.<p>Last year, they closed a significant chunk of their stores and re-branded again as "Best Buy Express". I haven't bothered to go into one since this happened but, if they're selling Best Buy's stock at Best Buy prices, it should be a distinct improvement despite the loss of identity.<p>Back when Radioshack re-branded to "The Source" I felt like some piece of my childhood had been lost, but Radioshack had already ceased to be Radioshack by that point, in Canada at least. "The Source" was always one of the stores you just walked past. I doubt anyone will miss them.
I remember fondly the talks I had with strangers about their hobbies and learning about technology while I was employed there. I remember seeing this specific stores sales numbers and thinking to myself that their daily sales were close to our monthly. Our store closed shortly after.
> She said that since she didn’t go through training, Edward’s father said she couldn’t officially be a repair tech. But through the years, she honed her skills.<p>> Before he passed away, she said he was incredibly impressed with her growth.<p>> “Last year, (Michael King) informed me, ‘I can’t give you the title because you didn’t go to college, but you do a heck of a good job repairing things and fixing it and taking care of people,’” Henning said.<p>All that hard work and nothing but a verbal compliment, no wonder no one in retail cares anymore.
Lots of memories from my own childhood and my kids'. My dad took me on my first visit to a Detroit-area store in the mid-60's. Used to love just walking around and checking out the shelves. Sort of a Fry's vibe but there was one in nearly every decent-sized town. The oldest piece of running tech currently in my house is a 20 year-old Realistic 4-port gigabit switch that connects my office machines to the router in the family room :).
So sad. They had a huge chance to be the center of the "maker world", but instead they had some terrible leadership that was trying to make the small chains compete with Best Buy.<p>If the chain simply focused on it's hobbyist roots, got into 3d printing, and tried to be a physical store for something like Adafruit, partnered with like Mark Rober or something, maybe pick up some other esoteric hobbies, they'd be thriving.
The truest form of hacking was when you could fuck with public utilities using parts you got at Radio Shack. I wish I still had my DTMF dialer, it was so cool. Maybe kids today are buying parts to build GSM base stations. Maybe they'll bring back pirate radio, once all the analog radio bands have been replaced with digital. I just hope they get to experience that thrill and wonder at the power that hidden knowledge brings.
It should be possible without too much searching to find the Onion headline "Radio Shack CEO Admits He Has No Idea What the Hell His Business Model Is."<p>Interesting that it should have lasted so long in Maryland, and that the last store should be in Prince Frederick (a town I never heard of). It seems to me that thirty years ago I spent a lot of time at a Wheaton, Maryland, Radio Shack
The last one in my area shut down in 2014/2015. I stopped by and bought several large shopping bags worth of components, all for around $75. Now, I don't think there's <i>anywhere</i> locally to buy electronic components, except for industrial capacitors and things like that at trade supply shops.
Yes, Radio Shack was often the only place you could find the odd resistor, vacuum tube (for an audiophile-grade amp, what else?), or coax signal splitter. But they always asked for your phone number on checkout -- why? It's not like they ever called you or anything (thankfully).
The local Hobbytowns had an aisle of RadioShack branded components- really basic stuff you might use for an elementary school science fair. Of course one of the stores closed last year, and the other is 90% R/C cars, so even that couldn't last.
A number of years ago, maybe six or seven, I was staying at a cabin in the middle of nowhere northern Minnesota. Well over an hours drive away from any major town or retailer.<p>My intentions were to work from the cabin for the week in peace and quiet. Have some nice secluded time to relax. The rub was that the WiFi password simply didn't work. The owner of the cabin was being no help, said the password on the note was correct and I could otherwise plug my laptop in to Ethernet directly. My MacBook had no Ethernet port.<p>In the small nearby town there was a RadioShack, and inside I find a single make of USB Ethernet adapter. I buy it, and take it back to the cabin. It doesn't work with my MacBook. Activity lights don't come on. I don't know if it was a driver issue or what. It came with a CD, but that's no help on a relatively recent MacBook.<p>I needed to get work done, and in pure frustration end up resetting the firmware on the wireless router using the button on the back and reconfiguring it with their hard wired Xbox One's built in browser. This infuriated the owner of the cabin as it knocked out their temperature and water sensors, which I ended up setting back up for them. I was however able to get work done. Probably not what I should have done but it worked.<p>On my way out of town, I swung back by the RadioShack to return the Ethernet adapter. I explain to the guy behind the counter that it had not worked with my MacBook and the guy proceeds to argue with me that it's Mac compatible and accuses me of buying it, using it, and returning it. I have to argue with the guy for what seemed like several minutes, and recounted him the story of resetting the WiFi. I've never had such a hostile return process in all my life.<p>Anyway, that's the last time I ever visited a RadioShack.
I was under the impression that RadioShack went bankrupt a few years back? Were the existing stores just "squatting" on the name?<p>Sometimes these kinds of things escape my notice, but I recall RadioShack because the minute I heard they were shutting down, I hopped in the car to get to the one nearest me and loaded up two shopping bags of electronics components, switches, banana jacks, oddball high-wattage resistors, etc. Because it's RadioShack, even at 75% off the prices were only "meh" but it's all stuff I was more or less guaranteed to use eventually in projects or repairs.<p>Speaking of, I really hate buying one-off components from Amazon. I needed a panel-mount BNC jack the other day and literally the best option was $7 for 10 of them. So effectively I paid $7 for one (which is way too much) and now I have 9 that will be sold for pennies at my estate sale a few decades from now.<p>And now the tariffs are basically going to shut down my usage of AliExpress for bulk orders of cheap components, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to end up dropping electronics as a hobby altogether in the long run.
> <i>She said that since she didn’t go through training, Edward’s father said she couldn’t officially be a repair tech. But through the years, she honed her skills.</i><p>> <i>Before he passed away, she said he was incredibly impressed with her growth.</i><p>> <i>“Last year, (Michael King) informed me, ‘I can’t give you the title because you didn’t go to college, but you do a heck of a good job repairing things and fixing it and taking care of people,’” Henning said.</i><p>Maybe the writers ended the piece like they did because they wanted the "good job repairing things and fixing it and taking care of people" note.<p>But I also heard echoes of systemic sexism or classism.<p>And also, really, someone being snubbed by <i>Radio Shack</i>, of all things?<p>Radio Shack was where kids, and anyone else without credentials, could go and get the Forrest Mims electronics book, and some tools and parts, and... <i>just do things</i>.<p>Classist gatekeeping by affluent Stanford bros at Google is one thing, because they've always been in an echo chamber. But a Radio Shack franchise should've known better.