11 ms·

The last RadioShack in Maryland is closing

126 points by ivewonyoung 2y ago

codingdave 2y ago
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: https://www.radioshack.com/locations https://www.radioshack.com/locations
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  The ones I’ve seen sell mostly phones and toys now. They might have a very small selection of components in a corner.
  - luma 2y ago
    Phones are radios, it’s right there in the name of the store.
- ks2048 2y ago
  There are also RadioShack stores in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua https://www.radioshackla.com/guatemala/storepickup/ https://www.radioshackla.com/guatemala/storepickup/
iancmceachern 2y ago
Bummer
EA-3167 2y ago
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. "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.
- a_shoeboy 2y ago
  They were always terrible, but I have fond pre-teen memories of saving up my allowance to buy components off the pegboard in the back and then failing to make anything that worked with them.
  - colecut 2y ago
    Those were the days
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    I also have fond memories of being young, but when I really stop and think about it, the key ingredient was *being young*.
    - a_shoeboy 2y ago
      I have plenty of unpleasant memories of being young. They don't involve RadioShack though.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    The only things worthwhile to get at RadioShack were electronics project components, breadboards, soldering equipment, circuit board etching stuff and so on. Once they threw that stuff under the bus in order to sell cell phones and $9 toys, the place went downhill fast.
  - tomwheeler 2y ago
    I have fond memories of the manager letting me play with the computers for hours. Our Radio Shack was in the mall and I'd drop in and start writing programs on the TRS-80 display models while my parents were shopping. The manager not only didn't kick me out (like the manager of the bookstore always did if I looked at a book for more than five minutes), he'd come over and teach me some things when he wasn't busy.
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      That sounds like a great example of the difference between people who love their job and see it as an opportunity to meet interesting people, and someone who hates their job and just grudgingly draws a paycheck.
tombert 2y ago
Sad to see that the last two in Orlando are dead now too. 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. 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. 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.
- Carrok 2y ago
  > I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store Given Amazon's labor practices, maybe you should be.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    I’m always amused about people criticizing Amazon’s labor practices since they are hiring people directly and based in the US and don’t share the same concern about labor conditions in China where all of manufacturing happens and where RadioShack got its products
    - Carrok 2y ago
      > and don’t share the same concern about labor conditions in China where all of manufacturing happens and where RadioShack got its products [Citation needed] We can care about both things.
      - nandomrumber 2y ago
colecut 2y ago
My only retail job ever was at Radioshack back in 2009, I lasted about 2 months before landing an office IT job.. It was barely a shell of its former self then.. the only training I remember was being told to upsell batteries with every transaction.. I didn't make it long enough to be trained on selling cell phone plans which was the only way to make commission... 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 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?" I was anxious pretty much every minute that I worked there. May I never experience retail again.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  My first job was also at RadioShack but back in 1995. We were all focused on batteries, adapters and consumer electronics. and cell phones were starting to be a big deal as carriers started subsidizing phones.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I remember the "Battery Club" you could get one free battery a month I think. They gave you a little card and would punch a hole in it for every battery you got. My dad would stop in every month to get his free battery. I don't recall if any purchase was required but I don't think so.
    - michaelcampbell 2y ago
      It wasn't; at least for me as a teenager in the 80's. Could have been a per-store policy, but the one in the Lockport suburb of Chicago and the one in the Winter Garden suburb of Orlando didn't.
    - typhonic 2y ago
      In the 1960's, my brother and I would walk about three miles (over Red Mountain in Birmingham AL) to the closest Radio Shack. We would each get a free battery using our cards and usually we didn't buy anything. Eventually we became pretty good customers.
myvoiceismypass 2y ago
Does anyone have any recommendations for niche physical shops that are still open in the Bay Area that are Radio Shack esque, even if small?
- ramenbytes 2y ago
  Urban Ore in Berkeley. It's a salvage shop with an electronics area. Scored some vintage Tek scopes there.
  - myvoiceismypass 2y ago
    Oh! I have been there but I was only focused on house / remodeling type stuff, thanks for the recommendation!
- jwagenet 2y ago
  If you mean components, I think jameco and anchor electronics are still open. Unfortunately Halted and Weird Stuff are gone.
  - epsilonaurigae 2y ago
    Anchor is the only one left. Fond memories rifling through HSC back in my Cisco days :( American Science and Surplus .. I think … still exists in Chicago.
- wmlavender 2y ago
  There is also Electronics Plus in San Rafael. It is an old school electronics parts store, complete with the ability to sell you cable by the foot.
wg0 2y ago
What are the reasons for decline? Online commerce? Or shift in hacker culture?
- sokoloff 2y ago
  Selling one transistor for $1.99 when Aliexpress will sell you 100 for $1.02 is a big part of it.
- pixl97 2y ago
  Expensive mall based rents in general and large amounts of company debt. Which falls apart when you have competitive online shopping. Which falls apart further when you buy a giant bag of what you need online cheaper.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  - The first thing the great Internet consumed in the 90's (and earlier, really) was technical occupations and hobbies - people affiliated with those were likely amongst the first to spend a lot of time online and want to do things online like buy stuff. - Anything small and where part numbers matter greatly is going to have advantages when sold and bought online. You'll be able to type in a part number and get a straight answer on cost and availability. This can also happen if a store has a good customer service representative but that stopped being a thing somewhere between 9/11 and the GFC of 2008 - also around the time Walmart had to raise it's starting wage to $10/hr. just to get people in the door. - Less people are repairing electronics and less electronics are repairable. The way consumer electronics are built are different now than say in the 80's or 90's - components are often surface mount and often things are just a CPU/MCU+RAM+flash on a board with a bit of surrounding surface mount stuff. - A lot of what used to be consumer electronics exists on everyone's smartphones. No more clock radios, walkmans, boomboxes, tape decks, VCRs, DVD/CD players, landline phones, etc. I would bet Bluetooth speakers have essentially replaced home stereos for many. One thing Radio Shack did sell was media and all forms of converter cables for home electronics and there just isn't a great need for that anymore with how everyone interacts with media now. Desktop PCs are niche now, non-gamer non-business laptops are disposable. Many just use their ISP router for WiFi. Home assistant stuff had to take on a friendlier, non-hacker image to gain acceptance.
reverendsteveii 2y ago
"The Last RadioShack In Maryland" is my new favorite Tom Waits song
- bbeonx 2y ago
  Followed closely by "The Breadboard Has Been Drinking"
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    What’s he ProtoTyping in theeerreee? What the hell is he prototyping in there?
mavilia 2y ago
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. It was always nice to visit back home (including this year) and see that this store was still around. It will certainly be missed :(
- jasonmarks_ 2y ago
  > Weird to see my home county pop up on HN I second this sentiment. It is sorta bizarre, there is not really a tech scene in the area except for a few niche roles in support of Pax River Naval Base (I'm also operating my SaaS down here https://weatherthetrip.com/download https://weatherthetrip.com/download :peace_sign:). I remember visiting this store back in the 2000's and was surprised when I saw it still in business a few months back.
neilv 2y ago
> 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. > Before he passed away, she said he was incredibly impressed with her growth. > “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. 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. But I also heard echoes of systemic sexism or classism. And also, really, someone being snubbed by Radio Shack, of all things? 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... just do things. 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.
- WorldPeas 2y ago
  Forrest mims, now that's a blast from the past. I've gotta see if I still have that book
- pipeline_peak 2y ago
  Nothing you mentioned shows evidence of sexism.
SnoJohn 2y ago
Good. If I can get there this weekend I can get my last free battery from the battery club.
magnusss 2y ago
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).
- tomwheeler 2y ago
  Obviously so they could track your purchases. Thankfully, I learned a valuable lesson as a kid when my parents told them "None of your business." Too bad this question has become so commonplace that few people seem to challenge it anymore.
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    In NYC, even if you walk in to a restaurant with open tables, they'll often insist on taking your number before you can be seated. It goes through a platform called Resy.
    - soylentcola 2y ago
      And then (at least around here) they often make you scan a QR code in order to see the menu. It's often not a direct link to the menu, but rather a third party site or a link shortener that tracks traffic for marketing data.
      - bsimpson 2y ago
        Oh shit - I never thought about the privacy ramifications about the death of paper menus. I get that it's more eco friendly, and that it allows each dish to have more space for a photo and detailed description; but I hate the experience of staring at my phone to try to pick a meal.
    - tomwheeler 2y ago
      It happened to me last week at a small Thai restaurant in Las Vegas.
WorldPeas 2y ago
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.
- bsimpson 2y ago
  I smile whenever I see the RadioShack logo on my solder and soldering iron.
evanmoran 2y ago
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". 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. And RIP RadioShack. You always had a hard drive when we needed one to reinstall windows during a lan party. holds up a glass
- dylan604 2y ago
  There are many retail places that I know that are just unable to keep up with ever increasing rent. There is only so much a retailer can do with the prices of their products before they lose customers. Losing customers only worsens the pressure on paying rent. Consumers say they lament the loss of brick and mortar stores, yet their actions of only buying online shows that isn't really that big of a loss to them. It's such a weird situation for a retailer. I don't envy their situation.
  - Shog9 2y ago
    Even before "online" was an option, folks were fleeing high prices in high rent districts for cheaper goods on the outskirts. Heck, I remember folks banding together to get in on bulk buys decades ago, when that was neither convenient nor quick. High rent will kill retail in an area no matter what; if online also gets you faster and easier, then who would choose anything else?
    - dylan604 2y ago
      What it suggest to me is that delivery fees are too cheap. Amazon subsidizing shipping to the point customers expect same-day as an option on something as insignificant than it was just a simple button click. No other thought given to the actual cost. Where going to the store probably means putting on clothes, driving somewhere, dealing with other humans, before driving back. The original online purchase meant possibly saving taxes, but now everyone collects taxes so no savings there. If there was a tipping point of being able to save brick&mortar, COVID pushed it over to the non-recoverable side.
karpatic 2y ago
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.
marcusb 2y ago
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 anywhere locally to buy electronic components, except for industrial capacitors and things like that at trade supply shops.
beloch 2y ago
There's something of a parallel history for Radioshack up here in Canada. 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. 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. 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. 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.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
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.
panzagl 2y ago
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.
bityard 2y ago
I was under the impression that RadioShack went bankrupt a few years back? Were the existing stores just "squatting" on the name? 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. 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. 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.
- MisterTea 2y ago
  > 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. The real bargains were the component cabinets themselves. Those big commercial chest of drawers retail for thousands of dollars. My co-worker bought the entire aisle of drawers after they were empty of components for I think a hundred bucks. Organized his entire basement shop into them.
  - bityard 2y ago
    I tried to get those too, but they were already marked as "sold" by the time I got there. :(
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mycall 2y ago
I found a RadioShack open in Mexico City last week, along with Sears and Woolworths. I thought they were all gone too.
michaelcampbell 2y ago
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. 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. But RS was the genesis.
donatj 2y ago
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Anyway, that's the last time I ever visited a RadioShack.
markbnj 2y ago
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 :).
phendrenad2 2y ago
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 right now, you're willing to drive 30min-1hr to get it. 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. [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.
- cr125rider 2y ago
  Yup. Impressive in the world where raspberry pis and arduinos and 3D printing are crazy popular they abandoned their roots in favor of cordless telephones and TV. Horrible strategic decisions for a decade will do that…
exabrial 2y ago
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. 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.
cafard 2y ago
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." 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
1970-01-01 2y ago
RIP Tandy
pipeline_peak 2y ago
> 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. > Before he passed away, she said he was incredibly impressed with her growth. > “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. All that hard work and nothing but a verbal compliment, no wonder no one in retail cares anymore.
wkat4242 2y ago
Yeah I can imagine. 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. 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. 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.

126 points by ivewonyoung 2y ago

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: https://www.radioshack.com/locations https://www.radioshack.com/locations

SoftTalker 2y ago
The ones I’ve seen sell mostly phones and toys now. They might have a very small selection of components in a corner.
- luma 2y ago
  Phones are radios, it’s right there in the name of the store.
ks2048 2y ago
There are also RadioShack stores in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua https://www.radioshackla.com/guatemala/storepickup/ https://www.radioshackla.com/guatemala/storepickup/

iancmceachern 2y ago

Bummer

EA-3167 2y ago

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. "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.

a_shoeboy 2y ago
They were always terrible, but I have fond pre-teen memories of saving up my allowance to buy components off the pegboard in the back and then failing to make anything that worked with them.
- colecut 2y ago
  Those were the days
- EA-3167 2y ago
  I also have fond memories of being young, but when I really stop and think about it, the key ingredient was *being young*.
  - a_shoeboy 2y ago
    I have plenty of unpleasant memories of being young. They don't involve RadioShack though.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  The only things worthwhile to get at RadioShack were electronics project components, breadboards, soldering equipment, circuit board etching stuff and so on. Once they threw that stuff under the bus in order to sell cell phones and $9 toys, the place went downhill fast.
- tomwheeler 2y ago
  I have fond memories of the manager letting me play with the computers for hours. Our Radio Shack was in the mall and I'd drop in and start writing programs on the TRS-80 display models while my parents were shopping. The manager not only didn't kick me out (like the manager of the bookstore always did if I looked at a book for more than five minutes), he'd come over and teach me some things when he wasn't busy.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    That sounds like a great example of the difference between people who love their job and see it as an opportunity to meet interesting people, and someone who hates their job and just grudgingly draws a paycheck.

tombert 2y ago

Sad to see that the last two in Orlando are dead now too. 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. 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. 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.

Carrok 2y ago
> I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store Given Amazon's labor practices, maybe you should be.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  I’m always amused about people criticizing Amazon’s labor practices since they are hiring people directly and based in the US and don’t share the same concern about labor conditions in China where all of manufacturing happens and where RadioShack got its products
  - Carrok 2y ago
    > and don’t share the same concern about labor conditions in China where all of manufacturing happens and where RadioShack got its products [Citation needed] We can care about both things.
    - nandomrumber 2y ago

colecut 2y ago

My only retail job ever was at Radioshack back in 2009, I lasted about 2 months before landing an office IT job.. It was barely a shell of its former self then.. the only training I remember was being told to upsell batteries with every transaction.. I didn't make it long enough to be trained on selling cell phone plans which was the only way to make commission... 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 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?" I was anxious pretty much every minute that I worked there. May I never experience retail again.

scarface_74 2y ago
My first job was also at RadioShack but back in 1995. We were all focused on batteries, adapters and consumer electronics. and cell phones were starting to be a big deal as carriers started subsidizing phones.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  I remember the "Battery Club" you could get one free battery a month I think. They gave you a little card and would punch a hole in it for every battery you got. My dad would stop in every month to get his free battery. I don't recall if any purchase was required but I don't think so.
  - michaelcampbell 2y ago
    It wasn't; at least for me as a teenager in the 80's. Could have been a per-store policy, but the one in the Lockport suburb of Chicago and the one in the Winter Garden suburb of Orlando didn't.
  - typhonic 2y ago
    In the 1960's, my brother and I would walk about three miles (over Red Mountain in Birmingham AL) to the closest Radio Shack. We would each get a free battery using our cards and usually we didn't buy anything. Eventually we became pretty good customers.

myvoiceismypass 2y ago

Does anyone have any recommendations for niche physical shops that are still open in the Bay Area that are Radio Shack esque, even if small?

ramenbytes 2y ago
Urban Ore in Berkeley. It's a salvage shop with an electronics area. Scored some vintage Tek scopes there.
- myvoiceismypass 2y ago
  Oh! I have been there but I was only focused on house / remodeling type stuff, thanks for the recommendation!
jwagenet 2y ago
If you mean components, I think jameco and anchor electronics are still open. Unfortunately Halted and Weird Stuff are gone.
- epsilonaurigae 2y ago
  Anchor is the only one left. Fond memories rifling through HSC back in my Cisco days :( American Science and Surplus .. I think … still exists in Chicago.
wmlavender 2y ago
There is also Electronics Plus in San Rafael. It is an old school electronics parts store, complete with the ability to sell you cable by the foot.

wg0 2y ago

What are the reasons for decline? Online commerce? Or shift in hacker culture?

sokoloff 2y ago
Selling one transistor for $1.99 when Aliexpress will sell you 100 for $1.02 is a big part of it.
pixl97 2y ago
Expensive mall based rents in general and large amounts of company debt. Which falls apart when you have competitive online shopping. Which falls apart further when you buy a giant bag of what you need online cheaper.
RiverCrochet 2y ago
- The first thing the great Internet consumed in the 90's (and earlier, really) was technical occupations and hobbies - people affiliated with those were likely amongst the first to spend a lot of time online and want to do things online like buy stuff. - Anything small and where part numbers matter greatly is going to have advantages when sold and bought online. You'll be able to type in a part number and get a straight answer on cost and availability. This can also happen if a store has a good customer service representative but that stopped being a thing somewhere between 9/11 and the GFC of 2008 - also around the time Walmart had to raise it's starting wage to $10/hr. just to get people in the door. - Less people are repairing electronics and less electronics are repairable. The way consumer electronics are built are different now than say in the 80's or 90's - components are often surface mount and often things are just a CPU/MCU+RAM+flash on a board with a bit of surrounding surface mount stuff. - A lot of what used to be consumer electronics exists on everyone's smartphones. No more clock radios, walkmans, boomboxes, tape decks, VCRs, DVD/CD players, landline phones, etc. I would bet Bluetooth speakers have essentially replaced home stereos for many. One thing Radio Shack did sell was media and all forms of converter cables for home electronics and there just isn't a great need for that anymore with how everyone interacts with media now. Desktop PCs are niche now, non-gamer non-business laptops are disposable. Many just use their ISP router for WiFi. Home assistant stuff had to take on a friendlier, non-hacker image to gain acceptance.

reverendsteveii 2y ago

"The Last RadioShack In Maryland" is my new favorite Tom Waits song

bbeonx 2y ago
Followed closely by "The Breadboard Has Been Drinking"
- bee_rider 2y ago
  What’s he ProtoTyping in theeerreee? What the hell is he prototyping in there?

mavilia 2y ago

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. It was always nice to visit back home (including this year) and see that this store was still around. It will certainly be missed :(

jasonmarks_ 2y ago
> Weird to see my home county pop up on HN I second this sentiment. It is sorta bizarre, there is not really a tech scene in the area except for a few niche roles in support of Pax River Naval Base (I'm also operating my SaaS down here https://weatherthetrip.com/download https://weatherthetrip.com/download :peace_sign:). I remember visiting this store back in the 2000's and was surprised when I saw it still in business a few months back.

neilv 2y ago

> 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. > Before he passed away, she said he was incredibly impressed with her growth. > “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. 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. But I also heard echoes of systemic sexism or classism. And also, really, someone being snubbed by Radio Shack, of all things? 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... just do things. 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.

WorldPeas 2y ago
Forrest mims, now that's a blast from the past. I've gotta see if I still have that book
pipeline_peak 2y ago
Nothing you mentioned shows evidence of sexism.

SnoJohn 2y ago

Good. If I can get there this weekend I can get my last free battery from the battery club.

magnusss 2y ago

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).

tomwheeler 2y ago
Obviously so they could track your purchases. Thankfully, I learned a valuable lesson as a kid when my parents told them "None of your business." Too bad this question has become so commonplace that few people seem to challenge it anymore.
- bsimpson 2y ago
  In NYC, even if you walk in to a restaurant with open tables, they'll often insist on taking your number before you can be seated. It goes through a platform called Resy.
  - soylentcola 2y ago
    And then (at least around here) they often make you scan a QR code in order to see the menu. It's often not a direct link to the menu, but rather a third party site or a link shortener that tracks traffic for marketing data.
    - bsimpson 2y ago
      Oh shit - I never thought about the privacy ramifications about the death of paper menus. I get that it's more eco friendly, and that it allows each dish to have more space for a photo and detailed description; but I hate the experience of staring at my phone to try to pick a meal.
  - tomwheeler 2y ago
    It happened to me last week at a small Thai restaurant in Las Vegas.

WorldPeas 2y ago

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.

bsimpson 2y ago
I smile whenever I see the RadioShack logo on my solder and soldering iron.

evanmoran 2y ago

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". 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. And RIP RadioShack. You always had a hard drive when we needed one to reinstall windows during a lan party. holds up a glass

dylan604 2y ago
There are many retail places that I know that are just unable to keep up with ever increasing rent. There is only so much a retailer can do with the prices of their products before they lose customers. Losing customers only worsens the pressure on paying rent. Consumers say they lament the loss of brick and mortar stores, yet their actions of only buying online shows that isn't really that big of a loss to them. It's such a weird situation for a retailer. I don't envy their situation.
- Shog9 2y ago
  Even before "online" was an option, folks were fleeing high prices in high rent districts for cheaper goods on the outskirts. Heck, I remember folks banding together to get in on bulk buys decades ago, when that was neither convenient nor quick. High rent will kill retail in an area no matter what; if online also gets you faster and easier, then who would choose anything else?
  - dylan604 2y ago
    What it suggest to me is that delivery fees are too cheap. Amazon subsidizing shipping to the point customers expect same-day as an option on something as insignificant than it was just a simple button click. No other thought given to the actual cost. Where going to the store probably means putting on clothes, driving somewhere, dealing with other humans, before driving back. The original online purchase meant possibly saving taxes, but now everyone collects taxes so no savings there. If there was a tipping point of being able to save brick&mortar, COVID pushed it over to the non-recoverable side.

karpatic 2y ago

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.

marcusb 2y ago

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 anywhere locally to buy electronic components, except for industrial capacitors and things like that at trade supply shops.

beloch 2y ago

There's something of a parallel history for Radioshack up here in Canada. 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. 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. 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. 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.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

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.

panzagl 2y ago

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.

bityard 2y ago

I was under the impression that RadioShack went bankrupt a few years back? Were the existing stores just "squatting" on the name? 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. 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. 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.

MisterTea 2y ago
> 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. The real bargains were the component cabinets themselves. Those big commercial chest of drawers retail for thousands of dollars. My co-worker bought the entire aisle of drawers after they were empty of components for I think a hundred bucks. Organized his entire basement shop into them.
- bityard 2y ago
  I tried to get those too, but they were already marked as "sold" by the time I got there. :(

deleted 2y ago

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mycall 2y ago

I found a RadioShack open in Mexico City last week, along with Sears and Woolworths. I thought they were all gone too.

michaelcampbell 2y ago

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. 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. But RS was the genesis.

donatj 2y ago

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Anyway, that's the last time I ever visited a RadioShack.

markbnj 2y ago

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 :).

phendrenad2 2y ago

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 right now, you're willing to drive 30min-1hr to get it. 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. [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.

cr125rider 2y ago
Yup. Impressive in the world where raspberry pis and arduinos and 3D printing are crazy popular they abandoned their roots in favor of cordless telephones and TV. Horrible strategic decisions for a decade will do that…

exabrial 2y ago

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. 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.

cafard 2y ago

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." 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

1970-01-01 2y ago

RIP Tandy

pipeline_peak 2y ago

wkat4242 2y ago

Yeah I can imagine. 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. 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. 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.