Radio Shack
No one else has electronic components
As someone who used to be an Assistant Manager at Blockbuster…keep that thing dead and gone. Like as a consumer, sure I get it, but working there absolutely sucked. No one remembers the late fees or the fact Blockbuster would send you to collections for ONE late fee (like a whole $3.25) and then send you those bullshit cards in the mail letting you know that you owe them less than $5? yeah I remember cause on a near daily basis I’d get someone in the store yelling at me that they’re trying to get a loan or a house and this little card is fucking it all up for them. MOST of the time the late fee was because the absolutely ancient computer system we used that they never updated…at all…since the 80s…would skip barcodes randomly on scans. That or some vengeful employee at another store would just manually add fees to someones account (yes that was possible, yes we could just add fees to random accounts willy nilly)
also my District Manager was a douchenozzle. Mike, rot in hell.
An obligatory “Fuck Blockbuster:” They sucked compared to the local rental shops.
This is probably true, but I remember Blockbuster was good at renting out trash movies. While Netflix does this also, some of them no streaming service wants to or can pick up today. Like the old Mario movie or the weird Red Riding Hood movie with Henry Cavill. That being said, I still wouldn’t bring it back.
Toys R Us. No contest.
Fry’s electronics
Fry’s had been a living corpse for a decade. You’d have to go as far back as Circuit City to actually get the Fry’s you remember.
Even the zombie version of Fry’s was better than most of the alternatives (*cough* Best Buy *cough*).
Friendlies still exist I saw one just a month or two ago
I live 5 minutes from a friendlys and 15 minutes from another. They’re still out there
Circuit City. I grew up on CompUSA but CC had better prices, if I remember right from my childhood. Then CU died, then CC died, then FE died, now all we have is shitty BB.
My CC I got to go ‘in the back’ to watch then replace a psu that died and I correctly diagnosed, back in like… 03? Two techs for the store, super chill, talked me through the process. I’ve been building and repairing my own systems ever since. They told me to let them know when I was 16, they’d put in a good word for me after we chatted for about an hour. By the time I could legally work, the writing was on the wall, and CC died before I turned 17.
I wonder where those guys are at now. I thought I knew what I was doing, but they were so kind in explaining everything, answering every question, giving me confirmation about all sorts of stuff. I really hope they are doing well. They couldn’t have been mid-20s at the time.
I loved Radio Shack for the same reasons. I learned so much from the guys that worked there. I might buy something that only cost $5 but they would spend 30 minutes with me explaining how to fix issues that I had.
Micro center is the last real computer store. I miss egghead
We still have Toys R Us and Party City here, and they seem to be doing fine. Blockbuster isn’t really needed anymore. Old school Radio Shack would be pretty cool though.
How about independent pharmacies
Video rental is just plain outdated. Streaming as it is today has a lot of problems, but they are ones that could be easily solved through regulation if regulators ever had the appetite. These stores went out of business because technology made their industry obsolete. I bet most people would have to do a little work to even play a DVD or Blu-Ray today. Maybe dig out an old device and hook it up, or use a laptop with a disc drive. Maybe a gaming console, but there have been a lot on the market for a while now that don’t have optical drives. There’s enthusiasts of course- including people who still keep VCR’s and laser disc players and even people with their own reel-to-reel projectors, but they’re a tiny minority.
Friendly’s I only went to once and it was unremarkable casual dining. That industry DOES have a problem where private equity keeps on buying, looting, and destroying companies, but I’m also hopeful that can open up more space for small businesses instead. I’ll pass on this one.
My memories of RadioShack were that it was cheap junk that was overpriced, but often the only reasonable option unless you wanted to order online or through a catalog from somewhere that could take months to arrive. I do wonder what the world would have been like if RadioShack had positioned itself as a repaor parts supplier and lobbied for Right to Repair legislation. Probably a stretch of the imagination.
Circuit City… For some reason I thought they went out of business largely due to embezzlement, but when I look forward that now I can’t find anything so maybe I’m thinking of another company? Best Buy seems to be struggling to compete with Amazon and Wal-Mart still today, so I don’t think Circuit City could have lasted much longer than it did either way.
Party City and Toys-R-Us are the 2 that make me upset, because both were successful businesses ruined by Private Equity. Not that I want to simo for these corporations, but what PE has been doing to so many industries in the past decade is absolutely disgusting. Id I had to choose one to bring back I’d say Party City because a lot of the custom and specific party supplies there aren’t going to be stocked by your local Target or Wal-Mart, and that’s the kind of thing you’d prefer to see in person rather than order online.
I think what you said about RadioShack is exactly what they were up until the late 90s
You wouldn’t say that about video rental if you’ve been to Scarecrow Video in Seattle. They go way beyond what any modern streamer can do. It’s an institution, and one of the only things I actually miss about the states.
Please enlighten me then- what does Scarecrow Video do that makes them special? From a quick Internet search it looks like they re-organized into a non-profit, got officially recognized as a museum by the state, have relied on Kickstarter campaigns to stay running, and seem to still be struggling to keep the lights on. So just from skimming their website it seems like less of a business and more of a preserved piece of nostalgia and novelty.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m very much in favor of physical media and media preservation. Today’s streaming and digital “purchase” landscape has a ton of issues. I just think the solution to that is public libraries, and it looks like Scarecrow is trying to be a hybrid of a library, museum, and business with the business part failing.
I don’t see how you can be a fan of physical media and still fail to see see what’s special about a community-supported video museum with a huge emphasis on physical media preservation.
Now, is it the ideal solution? Maybe, actually - imagine if the state ran it? They’d refuse to carry certain things. Stuff could disappear if the wrong type of people got into public office. As it stands, they have a huge selection of R-rated, NC-17, and unrated media. They have every genre of film, stuff you simply cannot license anymore, rare and otherwise impossible to source media, and they do it with style.
It may not work as a business model anymore, and humanity’s videography is not sanitary enough for it to work as a fully public institution - I think they’ve struck upon a perfectly workable (if inelegant) middle ground.
Fuddrucker’s
Umm I don’t think we need more massive monopolise gaint corporations
Radio shack for sure. Has anything electronic or computer related you need.
RadioShack
The only of them that we had in Germany: Toys’r’us.
