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Demolishing the Fry's Electronics in Burbank
- raincom 2y agoFry's brothers made a biggest mistake of not taking the company public during the dot com bubble era. Had they taken these stores public, they would have diversified their investments.
- zippyman55 2y agoI miss the Fry’s of the late 1980s. I need a 7400 chip and a bag of chips. Then pick up a he-ne laser at weird stuff.
- aresant 2y agoDrooling over PC part reviews in magazines that I could never afford, checking the weekly printed Fry's ad in the local paper to find deals, convincing my parents to drop me at the electronics-nerd-utopia for a lazing weekend afternoon - "Won't you get bored?" . . . "No Mom!" Iconic building, nostalgic time.
- johnvanommen 2y ago> convincing my parents to drop me at the electronics-nerd-utopia for a lazing weekend afternoon - "Won't you get bored?" . . . "No Mom!" I had a traveling job for a while, I was away from home every single week. When you first start doing a job like that, you imagine that you'll be doing all kinds of sightseeing. I thought I'd be traipsing through Central Park and eating Cubanos in Miami. None of that happens IRL; you're so busy working, by the time you have a few hours to kill, all you want to do is space out. Doing tourist stuff gets to be WORK. After a few months of this, I started to just obsessively spend time at Fry's. I didn't even really need anything from Fry's. It was just this place I could reliably visit at any tech hub on the west coast. Doesn't matter if you're in Burbank or San Diego or Sacramento or Portland or Seattle: if it's 2010, there's a Fry's you can wander around in for a couple of hours. I've never been to The Space Needle in Seattle, but I've been to Fry's Electronics numerous times.
- corysama 2y agoHere's a decent 21 min mini-doc on the birth and death of Fry's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu2uAKc37jI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu2uAKc37jI Personally, visiting friends in California and them taking me to Fry's fir the first time was an experience I'll not forget. We had CompUSA back home. But, Fry's was a whole other level. Going from being a computer geek in 90s rural midwest to being a computer geek in a Fry's in Silicon Valley in the Tech Bubble was like stepping into a magically wonderful mirror world.
- shoelessone 2y agoA bit similar for me, I grew up in the Midwest and spent a lot of time wandering around CompUSA and Circuit City / Best Buy when I was a kid. When I was old enough and had some reason to go out West, Fry's was one of the top things on my list of things to go see, it felt like a pilgrimage of sorts.
- walterbell 2y agoEl Sobrante, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=94274 https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=94274 > The Fry's Foods grocery chain began at this location in 1954 when Donald Fry acquired Ray's Market, owned by Ray Dickenson. Joined by his brother, Charles, in 1955, they grew that initial store into a 41-store chain which they sold in 1972. Charles gifted a portion of the proceeds to his three sons, enabling them to launch the first store of what would one day become the highly successful Fry's Electronics retail chain.
- parshimers 2y agoit's sad to see this location go. it was such an amazing store on the inside. the theme had some great homages to Mars Attacks!, as well as a great many other sci-fi films. this album has some good pictures of some of the more notable sculptures in there, but the theme went even farther than just sculptures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/selfishcauses/albums/72157714056311057/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/selfishcauses/albums/721577140...
- walterbell 2y agoGreat photos! Painting and 3-D scan of Burbank Frys, https://savefrys.com/tributes/ https://savefrys.com/tributes/ and https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rip-frys-162eeef6095343ec8b3f6b0bdf0f8471 https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rip-frys-162eeef6095343ec8b3... Roman remnants in Phoenix store, https://nickdiak.com/2021/02/an-empire-crumbles-retrospective-of-the-roman-themed-frys-electronics/ https://nickdiak.com/2021/02/an-empire-crumbles-retrospectiv... Oil-themed store in Houston, https://houstonhistoricretail.com/electronics/frys-electronics/ https://houstonhistoricretail.com/electronics/frys-electroni...
- username_here 2y agoThe space themed store south of Houston is now home to Axiom Space (https://www.axiomspace.com https://www.axiomspace.com).
- pjs_ 2y agoWhere else could you simultaneously purchase through-hole transistors, a gaming motherboard, a 19" rack, a leafblower, a loudspeaker disguised as a plastic rock, pornography, a taser, a sandwich and a decent cup of coffee while surrounded by fiberglass cowboys and aliens... sad to see
- charcircuit 2y agoEbay? Amazon? Temu?
- timewizard 2y ago[before those existed]
- LeoPanthera 2y agoDon't forgot the knock-off cologne!
- classichasclass 2y agoSandwiches, too. Ate at the cafe a fair bit. When my buddy was living on Victory and Hollywood we hit Burbank on a regular basis. Of the Burbank, Fountain Valley, San Marcos, San Diego, Anaheim Hills, Roseville, Sacramento, Fremont, Las Vegas and Sunnyvale locations, I think I liked the San Diego one most for selection (it was a former Incredible Universe), but the Roseville and Las Vegas ones had the wildest themes, even more than the Burbank UFO. But the Fremont location when I ended up there in 2019 was deader than a doornail, and it was like waiting for the next hit to kill them. The next hit came sooner than I thought.
- LeoPanthera 2y agoFor those in the bay area, Micro Center is opening a branch in Santa Clara. https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/santa-clara.aspx https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/santa-clara.aspx Well, maybe. It's delayed months at this point.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vmladenov 2y agoI read a rumor that they’re aiming for May now
- nickzelei 2y agoThat link you posted there says 2025! Wow that makes me excited. Big fan of microcenter.
- stergios 2y agoNice, and in that same plaza is Harbor Freight.
- yellowapple 2y agoThat sounds like a pretty dangerous combination for my wallet.
- rmason 2y agoLoyal customer of the Detroit area Micro Center. Thought I was the furthest customer that day when I bought my last laptop there coming ninety miles. Salesman said he's sold two machines that day to customers from Grand Rapids and one to someone from Muskegon! That Muskegon customer had travelled nearly 400 miles roundtrip to buy a laptop. I'm fairly technical and yet I haven't ever found a question my salesman couldn't answer.
- bsder 2y agoWhen the hell are we going to get an Austin or San Antonio Microcenter?
- otterpro 2y agoI'm sad to see it end like this. About 20 years ago, I used to go to this Burbank Fry's after work whenever I could and spend hours just browsing. They had this cool 50's sci-fi alien/ufo movie theme inside. Another favorite is the Fry's in Anaheim where I got pc parts to build my first 486 PC in the early 90's. So many memories. I remember buying my first laptop ever, a monochrome thinkpad with personal check (as my credit card limit was too low) and having to call bank to verify my balance; also the day that I bought a Pentium CPU when it first came out, and the time when I got the boxed Windows 95 OS. Those were the days.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoSimilar... spent hours and hours at the one in Canoga Park during the 90s. (Sometimes DAK too.) Believe it had an "alice in wonderland" theme. Can't even remember what I bought but even perused the magazine section while there. Oh wait, I do remember buying a 20? foot long (several meter) orange crossover ethernet cable! Then I punched a hole thru the drywall in my apartment and connected my two PCs. One of which had dialup internet, so I could access it and my .mp3s from the other. Pre-wifi by about 5-10 years. :-D
- jedberg 2y agoCanoga Park was indeed Alice in Wonderland themed. That was my Fry's too. When the closed down they actioned off all of the Alice themed items inside. I came this close to buying a 15ft tall Queen of Hearts.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoHa, always thought you were from up north.
- jedberg 2y agoGrew up in LA, came to Berkeley for college at 18, have been in the bay ever since!
- 2y ago
- mmmBacon 2y agoI wonder what they did with the Fry’s 747.
- m463 2y agolol https://www.747sp.com/747sp-production-list/21992-447/ https://www.747sp.com/747sp-production-list/21992-447/ United purchased it for $1 in 1986 later asking price was $8.0 million in 2004 And Mr William Fry purchased it for $10 in 2005 trail gets murky though around 2009?
- tomcam 2y agoI bought it for three fiddy
- bigfatkitten 2y agoThey had a 727-200Adv at one point too. I assume it's been turned into Coke cans by now.
- taggart 2y agoWhile attending the University of Arizona in Tucson in the early 90s, I got very confused by posts on Usenet talking about buying computers at Fry’s. You see, the Fry’s grocery store chain still existed in Tucson at the time, so I could not figure out where a grocery store would stock computers! Needless to say when I moved to the Bay Area after college graduation, I wasted no time visiting the closest Fry’s Electronics. For me, that was the original Fremont location - the one in an office park off Mission Blvd with the space theme inside. I never see that location mentioned any more. It was closed after Fry’s bought the Incredible Universe stores and they moved the Fremont Fry’s to the IU store on Auto Mall Parkway.
- topato 2y agoFry's grocery is still the branding of Kroger in the PHX area
- kevinpet 2y agoI was confused when I moved out to Phoenix especially because the logos are pretty similar. Turns out Fry's electronics was started by the sons of the founder of Fry's food.
- paradox460 2y agoPhoenix used to have two Fry's electronics too
- wileydragonfly 2y agoI miss both Incredible Universe and Fry’s a great deal. Incredible Universe was the only store I ever saw that let me play a NeoGeo and CDi.
- johnvanommen 2y agoI think the best Fry's of all was the former Incredible Universe location, just south of Portland. I believe it was the only Fry's that didn't charge sales tax. The Fry's by I8 in San Diego was an Incredible Universe too. (Not the Fry's in north county, the one further south.)
- jimt1234 2y agoThe Fry's in San Diego (on I15, near I8) has recently been demo'ed. It's an empty dirt lot now. Not sure what's going in there; probably condos.
- mrpippy 2y agoThat Mission Valley San Diego Fry’s seemingly bought all of Incredible Universe’s old delivery trucks too, and never repainted them. Well into the 2000s, it was hilarious to still see Incredible Universe trucks driving around delivering appliances. (Also I remember going to the North County/San Marcos one the weekend it opened, think I bought a 128 MB flash drive for $30. Now it’s a Costco Business Center)
- slicktux 2y agoGone are the times when I could spend some time perusing around Fry’s…looking at all the discrete components and computers. It was sad seeing it die too; all the empty shelves filled with the same item spread out…
- gedy 2y agoSad, but had a few great memories, such as bringing my kids there 8 or so years ago. We bought some cool stuff amongst the Hollywood props, then we sat in and watched one of the Star Wars films in its small theatre. They were young and had a blast.
- sema4hacker 2y agoThe first Windows machine I ever bought was a cheap advertised 386 deal at the San Jose Fry's in the 90's. The sales guy took me around to load up a shopping cart with chassis, mother board, memory, hard disk, floppy, etc., with each item stocked in separate store departments. Probably around $200 total. Took it all home, put it together, and it worked reliably for years.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoAs a kid my dad always was building computers and I’ll never forget the first time he took me to a Fry’s and I could just pick all the parts to build my PC right then and there. What an experience that was.
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- bigmattystyles 2y agoWhat always bugged me about Fry's at the end was how disrespectful people eventually got to the sample goods on the floor. I swear, every motherboard had their pins smooshed in. Maybe this is `old man remembers` but it wasn't that trashy in its heyday, when admittedly, I was a kid so maybe I didn't notice. Maybe it's because they had to pivot hard to cheap trinkets towards the end and that brought in a different crowd, I'm not sure.
- ack_complete 2y agoGiven the kinds of returns that Fry's would accept, I wouldn't be surprised if those were returns they had accepted that way. The one near me would attempt to resell laptop power bricks that had been returned with no AC power cord, and one time I got "new" RAM sticks that turned out to be actually used and so busted that a quarter of the data bus lines were inoperative.
- jallmann 2y agoI remember buying a Radeon at Fry's (Fountain Valley, Roman Empire), going home, opening it up and... it was something else, a cheap VGA card. They gave me a hard time about taking it back too, 16-year old me didn't know how to cut through the BS so my dad had to go back with me on a 3rd trip and get it sorted out. What a place.
- coobird 2y agoThat was my local Fry's and I wouldn't touch any returned item with a 10-foot pole given the stories I heard about them, despite them being on discount. This was back in the late 90s before social media, so it must of been word of mouth through my high school friends. I had the impression that their return process was very lax so you'd have "customers" returning broken items or worse... And they'd end up on the shelves with the white "returned item" sticker with the discounted price.
- theturtle32 2y ago
- esafak 2y agoIf you're near Cincinnati be sure to visit Jungle Jim's, which is like Fry's for food, only way bigger.
- arnonejoe 2y agoAnyone remember the one in Sunnyvale in the early 90s. It had a circuit board floor?
- zippyman55 2y agoI visited that a lot! I never caught on to that. Darn!
- TimTheTinker 2y agoI used to shop at this Fry's for supplies when I was an ECE major at Cal Poly Pomona. Sad to see it go. (I'm sad to see local electronics supply stores in general disappear.)
- user3939382 2y agoMy dear dad drove me back and forth between Burbank and Palm Springs 3 times while I figured out motherboard/memory compatibility. Miss dad and miss Fry’s.
- dimator 2y agothat's so sweet. :') reminds me of my mom taking me to radio shack, so many times. thank you for sharing.
- DataJunkie 2y agoMy dad and I spent so many days in that place. The Burbank one wasn’t my favorite. My favorite was the Alice in Wonderland theme in Woodland Hills. Also liked the tropical theme in Manhattan Beach. Our local Fry’s, one of the last ones to open, was sad. Some kind of California nostalgia theme. Palo Alto, cowboy/Wild West… that one was so cramped. I remember the Santa Clara one had a lot of hardware that others didn’t have like large plotters etc. Definitely miss it. Even the low quality of the items and the rude or useless sales staff lol.
- pimlottc 2y agoI just recently learned from the last Not Just Bikes video [0] that these big box stores tend to be very hard to reuse (even when they don't include a giant spaceship). 99 Percent Invisible has a good article [1] on some of the challenges and a few success stories, but it takes a major effort. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7-e_yhEzIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7-e_yhEzIw 1: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ghost-boxes-reusing-abandoned-big-box-superstores-across-america/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ghost-boxes-reusing-a...
- krish98sai 2y agoThe construction guy in the video said 95% of the building is being recycled. Don't know how accurate that is, but good if true.
- ignormies 2y agoThe comment you're replying to is referring to the difficulty to repurpose these buildings without complete replacement. Recycling raw materials is important, but ideally we shouldn't be constructing buildings that are single-tenant, requiring a complete demolition just to make the land have utility again.
- CalRobert 2y agoAs sad as seeing the spaceship go makes me, I think even Jason Slaughter would approve of the fact 800 new homes are going in where Fry's used to be.
- walterbell 2y agoProposed development, https://la.urbanize.city/post/burbank-aero-crossings-2311-hollywood-way-frys-electronics https://la.urbanize.city/post/burbank-aero-crossings-2311-ho...
- PopAlongKid 2y agoThe building which used to house Fry's Electronics in Concord, CA is now an indoor gym/adventure type enterprise. https://pioneerpublishers.com/old-frys-building-to-see-new-life-with-urban-air-adventure/ https://pioneerpublishers.com/old-frys-building-to-see-new-l...
- jimt1234 2y agoMy favorite thing about Fry's was the weekly sale ads in the newspaper with all the rebate offers. At one time I had at least a dozen cheap-ass "web cams". LOL
- coobird 2y agoI probably still have some LEDs and transistors in my parts bin that (my dad) bought for me from that Fry's. Fry's really made me feel like a kid in a candy store -- all the PC software and hardware along with electronics parts too. I was less interested in the household appliances, but I think the small Sony Trinitron TV that was in my bedroom was from Fry's. Oh yes, they also had candy as well, strategically placed in the isle where we'd wait before reaching the cashier. Must have picked up dozens of Reese's peanut butter cups and Skittles over the years.
- b0bb1z3r0 2y ago[dead]
- brundolf 2y agoMy dad and I used to make a habit of going to the Plano, TX location together and just walking around. I'd want to look at the software and the games, he'd want to look at the big TVs. It was one of the few activities we could do together. Lots of nice memories doing that
- jrapdx3 2y agoI remember when Fry's opened in the Portland, OR area (actually ~15 miles south). It occupied the former Incredible Universe site. We considered it a notable upgrade. Fry's was like a museum of common and obscure electronic parts, devices and strangely miscellaneous stuff (mundane office supplies, home appliance accessories, etc.). It was definitely the go to place for computer building blocks and related supplies. It was amazing what could be found there. One really great thing was relay racks and all kinds of shelves and attachments for them. Too good to pass up I bought one. It was used in my office (for webserver and LAN) and still houses my home server. Like everywhere else Fry's closed unceremoniously. I guess the chain couldn't withstand the growing online competition and waning interest in desktop machines. Too bad they had to go, now and then it would be so convenient if neighborhood purveyors of "exotic" electronics were still around.
- walterbell 2y ago> it would be so convenient if neighborhood purveyors of "exotic" electronics were still around Speed up electronics prototyping in support of future manufacturing.
- vanchor3 2y agoI had gone there a few times probably several months before they closed. It was quite sad how empty it was. Product hangers were lined up in a single row with one item on each hanger. The only shelf that looked full was the one aisle filled with just the same two pack of canned air, nothing else.
- rcakebread 2y agoIn the early days, Fry's would take returns on opened software. I remember returning Borland C compiler after copying many floppies when I was a teen.
- supportengineer 2y agoI don’t know what kind of world we are leaving for the next generation. It’s completely devoid of any character or authenticity.
- ajmurmann 2y agoI'm generally very positive about technological and economic progress and just defended Fry's being replaced by online stores to my wife. That said, we are losing physical third spaces and I think that's a real problem. Towards the end going to Fry's was more entertainment for me then of practical value. PCPartPicker and online stores are much more convenient than walking around Fry's but if I had a kid who wanted to build their first PC I'd do much rather drive to Fry's together, walk around and check out the parts together etc. Even if it meant we had to go back there more than once because we got the wrong part or something didn't work. The shared effort and other like-minded people around just is a value in itself. My Fry's also was in a mall with a fabulous taqueria. The taqueria by itself isn't worth the drive but made for a great stop right after and turned it into a fun little outing. We need more things like this but I don't know how to make it work economically. Maybe shopping never was the best focal point for this?
- jedberg 2y agoOne of the things I loved most about Fry's was that clearly an engineer designed their checkout line. It's the only retail checkout line I've ever seen that fully embraced queueing theory. They had one long line that everyone got into, and a load balancer up front that would direct you to an open check stand, and at least at the store I went to, in their hayday they had 30 registers open at once!
- bartread 2y agoThis sort of queuing system is also widely used in Post Office and bank branches in the UK since at least the 1980s.
- ajmurmann 2y agoMany airline counter lines work this way here in the US and the line at my local post office does as well. The post office line hardly move though.
- aembleton 2y agoAldi in Market Street, Manchester, UK had that for many years. It worked really well. I think it might have put some people off when they saw the length of the queue, but it moved so fast, and you never felt like you'd chosen the wrong checkout as there was only one queue. Unfortunately, they redesigned the shop a few years ago and got rid of that.
- Tempest1981 2y agoWhich gave the checkers a 20-30 second break as the customer next-in-line briskly walked from the queue, past register 30, 29, 28, past more impulse items, ... down to register 4.
- gala8y 2y agohttps://maps.app.goo.gl/3knmmbEHYdgLQett7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/3knmmbEHYdgLQett7 Wow.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoWhat a nostalgia trip. And I am not even American and never been in a Fry's :)
- whalesalad 2y agoDamn. I grew up in Glendale and used to visit this store all the time. I’d take the bus if my parents couldn’t take me. Which was actually 3 buses and probably 4 hours of travel to get there and back. My dad worked at Lockheed Martin and the credit union was right across the street so that was always an excuse to drop-in after a bank visit. Got my first WRT54G there, my first managed switch, power supplies, misc parts for RC building (heat shrink, soldering accessories). Was always fun to visit “the pit” with all the motherboards and processors unboxed and on full display. Felt like the NYSE with people lined up to look at the board and grab a processor. It was always so active like a bee hive. Visiting more recently it was just a shell of its former self. It’s still my favorite store with the alien attack vibes and all the army jeeps.
- schlauerfox 2y agoThat's a crime the Valley Relics Museum couldn't get the Spaceship. It has done a really great job saving what can be saved of Los Angeles San Fernando Valley history. If you're ever near the Van Nuys airport check it out. Fry's was a happy place for me. Memories of their old Terminal based stockkeeping system (AS400? AIX? I heard rumors the owner wrote it themselves). The Burbank Scifi theme, the Manhattan Beach polynesian theme, the Woodland Hills Alice in Wonderland Theme. Even the old sacramento unthemed version and the newer train themed one. The memories of building my own computers for several iterations and almost always getting my parts there, shopping first with my Dad then later a relaxing walk on my own. The haunted look of female partners dragged there. The ecclectic selection. It was a okay substitute for an old style electronics store like Electronic City, but had so much other interesting things. So many interesting things lost in LA. DAK2000, TRI-ESS Sciences, OPAMP Books. ALL Electronics surplus.
- hnburnsy 2y agoGreat video on the history of Fry's and how its stores became abandoned at Bright Sun Films... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cjUqV-jvsSA&pp=ygUVYnJpZ2h0IHN1biBmaWxtcyBmcnlz https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cjUqV-jvsSA&pp=ygUVYnJpZ2h0IHN... Great channel in general.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vanishingvistas 2y agoAlways had good memories of hanging out at Fry's in Burbank. Maybe you guys could check out my work-in-progress ROBLOX level that captures that unique experience: https://www.roblox.com/games/18551707487/Frys-Electronics-Burbank https://www.roblox.com/games/18551707487/Frys-Electronics-Bu...
- brownkonas 2y agoA classic bit of satire and HTML form humor that reflected Fry's focus on products and ambiance but not necessarily employee helpfulness: https://web.archive.org/web/20200130175501/http://homepage.smc.edu/engfer_mark/frys.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20200130175501/http://homepage.s...