genec

Radio Shack "jumped the shark" long long ago... they failed to keep up with the consumer needs, and failed to move with the times, instead believing their cheap knockoff goods were suitable enough, and then establishing themselves as a Sprint store.

Almost everything they did led to their slow demise... They simply were no longer relevant. Their last desperate attempt to go back to the '80s was just sad.

Guys like me who did "electronics" and needed hardware, stopped going to RS long long ago... other sources were better... The biggest being Frys. Hobbists learned to shop Mouser, Digikey and others.
The electronics retail market is just plain mean... with vendors dropping out on a rather regular basis... Federated, Gateway, Lafayette, and others have come and gone... Best Buy is holding on for now.

mort1369

Problem is, they're still going to want an arm and a leg (plus triple net) for leases. . . .

mort1369

No kidding, although Buena Park Raceway is still open, and supposedly another track opened in my old stamping grounds of Whittier, CA.
Some of the stuff I used to use:
Edsel dragster, anyone?
PC080017 by John Mortensen, on Flickr
PC080018 by John Mortensen, on Flickr
PC080019 by John Mortensen, on Flickr

Catalina, catalina. . .
PC080012 by John Mortensen, on Flickr
Another Pontiac. .
PC080007 by John Mortensen, on Flickr

A couple of Retro Can-Am cars, the second one I scratchbuilt the chassis. .
MatthesCarChassis by John Mortensen, on Flickr
MatthesCarTop by John Mortensen, on Flickr
InfamousMortensenQuadpod by John Mortensen, on Flickr
InfamousMortensenQuadpodChassis by John Mortensen, on Flickr

Rage

Heck, it seems like most stores in the NYC area are closed or closing. It’s weird here nowadays...

SkinGriz

No, many (most?) are real shops. Some of the bigger ones also do stuff with horse saddles, cowboy gun holsters, etc.

I had a custom ironwork belt made at one.

Anyway, the line between what many consider “legitimate business” and black market isn’t nearly as cut and dry as do gooders would like to believe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

See also “Why the war on drugs is a joke.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair

SkinGriz

I’ve always wanted to buy some of those places and turn them into hipster lofts.

I was talking to a contractor friend of mine and he said the thing to overcome is the plumbing.

The drain waste pipes would all have to be redone as the difference between households showering + living + laundry would be a lot more water verses just customers and employees going potty.

canklecat

Sounds like a '50s film noir set in Chicago, NYC or Gotham.

But probably true, at least in some places. Same with some locksmiths, moving companies, waste disposal and (insert Sopranos trope here).

In my area it's mostly shady bars and strip clubs that serve that function.

canklecat

Check out Role Club, "brianthebootmaker" on Instagram. Youngish fella (30something, I'd guess) who apprenticed under a master bootmaker for years and now runs his own shop. Incredible work. Not inexpensive.

There are also tutorials on YouTube, but for some repairs we'd need equipment that isn't cost effective for only one or two pairs of boots. But there are some good tips for restoring my 50 year old pair of Herman Survivors that were used as a scratching post by my adopted tabby when she was a feral kitten. By the time I noticed she'd shredded the tops into semi-suede. But even that can be repaired with mostly elbow grease and no special tools.

Hondo Gravel

The old record stores. Rushing to the mall to get the new Ozzy album or some artist you like before they sell out.

skidder

You must not have been around in the 1970s and early 1980s, as RS was the place to go for your electronic needs and wants. They sold build kits that kids (or adults) could put together themselves, kits with mutli-purpose possibilities (breadboard and instructions for building a radio, simple computer calculator, controlable blinking devices, etc), individual parts (resistors, capacitors, simple IC's of that era, transistors, breadboarding equipment. That was the place to go and hang out for a few hours back in my youth.

skidder

There are two within 5 miles of me. One is your traditional tropical fish store with all the individual tanks containing individual types of fish, the other is a 'koi farm' with pools where you can buy those big koi goldfish for your backyard pond.

genec

Oh no, I very much was... at least in the late '60s; by the late '70s I was doing this stuff professionally. As a child, I had the RS 50 in 1 experimenter kit. It didn't have any ICs on it, but it did have a solar cell, a couple of transistors and lots of other components.



Shortly after that I used experimenter breadboards to do my own designs... and yes, I also built a kit or two from RS, and quite a few kits from Heathkit. But in the early '80s, RS was moving away from that and was carrying a lot more consumer electronics and fewer and fewer components.

Oh, and long before RS, I was opening consumer products and removing, testing and replacing vacuum tubes... courtesy of my local hardware store and their free tube tester. (I was about 12-14 years old at that point.) I also got a touch of "education" from a local TV repair shop, when I went in and asked what a "printed circuit board" was... I had actually seen them at that point, but did not quite grasp the concept, and quite a few radios I had worked on were point to point wired, but the parts were mounted on (but not soldered to) a phenolic board.

RS just sort of withered away when they went the TRS-80 and consumer products route... and I found other sources of the parts I needed... local parts houses and eventually, due to professional involvement... eventually commercial parts houses. I loved Mouser early on with their newspaper print catalogs... Eventually they grew as did others and all the catalogs were online.

Yeah, I remember the early Radio Shack.

genec

Buying '45s. Just one side had the good song... but occasionally you'd discover that hidden gem on the back.