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No mention of the Campbell’s Fry’s which—although practically inaccessible by car—was always overcrowded in the 90s.
The themes, the crowds, the chaos, and the variety made the Fry’s experience what it was. That, and knowing you were destined to return the next day to return for replacement something listed on that checked-at-the-exit receipt. Good times.
Even before a lot of locations were Fry’s, they were Incredible Universe, a big-box-store concept from Tandy who also owned Radio Shack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredible_Universe
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The repair bar employees would regularly rifle through customers’ hard drivers and keep the juciest pictures Pretty creepy. And this is from a well known company/establishment.
I remember taking my computer into repair at some Chinese shop. When I came to pivk it up, all their floor demos were showing the pictures and animations I had collected.
So it’s now after midnight PST and the website is still operating. Is this a false alarm or do we have any new information suggesting that the website and stores will be closing on a specific date? Because I’m starting to suspect that an unnamed employee at a single store might not be the most reliable source of information about the chain’s nationwide operations.
However, it appears something is happening soon: https://www.kron4.com/news/national/frys-electronics-permane...
Generally you know, there's a liquidation company that takes over, invalidating returns and other types of inventory rules and they sell everything. Light fixtures, cash registers, etc. They'll be around a bit I'd assume during liquidation.
And who's to say what's next. Payless shoes relaunched just the other month after doing a similar thing and the current owners of RadioShack may, if they listen to me, will relaunch as a hobbyist electronics store (arduino, sbcs, linux laptops, oscilloscopes, logic analyzes, robotics kits, drones, sdrs, 3d printers, smartcar tech, iot things, etc... possibly with "copy shop" like services for laser cutting, cnc machining and 3d printing and hourly workbench rental). Supposedly it got passed up the chain and is "under discussion".
Offer that + bootcamps/summer camps for kids but focused on physical gear and put it in a couple key population centers and I think the name RadioShack could become one of America's strongest (but not richest) brands. This also permits a flagship model so the launch will be relatively cheap. It's a "retail second" design, like the cat cafes. The first product is the service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who got back to PC building in the last few years, I’m jealous of people with a micro center in their city. Amazon and Newegg are not up to par
As some one who went to a microcenter exactly once for a GPU that wasn't ridiculously marked up when I was getting in to Ethereum,but would like to start building my own computer, what does Microcenter offer I can't get from New Egg and Amazon?
Lots of nostalgia about Fry’s here. Well, I have a different take. Fry’s was my first job, and my first introduction to wage slavery. They never at any point cared about employee health or well-being. Breaks were the state minimum. Pay was the state minimum. The entire staff (and there were hundreds back in the day, when the checkout line would back up into the store even with 20 registers open) shared one 7x7 beige…
Do you have reason to believe this was endemic to the whole company, or could it have just been your store?
Wilsonville, Oregon is home to Oregon’s only Fry’s location. I grew up there. I remember running into people from all across the state that would come down for its crazy deals. The building is huge and prime real estate in a rather affluent town. I wonder who or what they will do with the property. Maybe microcenter could come in. More likely though BestBuy is the only retailer likely to want such a large place but t…
That space is probably three times the size of any Best Buy I've been in. I have no idea what will go in there.
I can't count the number of times I'd said to myself, over the decades "just gonna go see whats new at Fry's", and then .. a few months later, those gadget/widget/grommets I bought on an impulse while idling in the aisles turned out to be very, very fruitful for some project or another...
We definitely have a weird future ahead of us, where browsing aisles and getting exposed to weird stuff is no longer a physical event.
I don't think I will feel the same level of nostalgia for Amazon, when it closes some time in the next billion years ..
So it’s now after midnight PST and the website is still operating. Is this a false alarm or do we have any new information suggesting that the website and stores will be closing on a specific date? Because I’m starting to suspect that an unnamed employee at a single store might not be the most reliable source of information about the chain’s nationwide operations.
A second hand claim from some rando on twitter sounds really unreliable. However, it appears something is happening soon: https://www.kron4.com/news/national/frys-electronics-permane... Generally you know, there's a liquidation company that takes over, invalidating returns and other types of inventory rules and they sell everything. Light fixtures, cash registers, etc. They'll be around a bit I'd assume during liquid…
I think that the fact that we all did expect them to close at some point caused us to overlook the rarity of a company ceasing operations overnight and we just took some rando's word for it.
Edit: it seems like this unnamed source was correct. Closure information is now posted at frys.com, which isn't quite midnight but close enough. I'm still a little disappointed at HN in general for basically taking one unconfirmed source at it's word without any of the top voted comments questioning or asking for confirmation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lived near the Palo Alto Fry's around the same time when I was a kid, and I always remembered it as a supermarket with some electronics. It wasn't until college that I got interested in computers and electronics and started to go back to Fry's again. I was always sort of puzzled - did I remember the supermarket correctly? Was it a Fry's? Whenever I said to people, "Fry's was a supermarket," they looked at me like I…
You are thinking of this (owned by Kroger's): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Food_and_Drug Similar logo, but different store, although they do share an origin.