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.

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

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 :(

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

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.