Build Date: Thu Apr 24 08:00:44 2025 UTC
Of course people in AA have a place with Pigdog. They’re our perma-designated drivers!
-- Flesh
More Trouble For Fry's Electronics
2020-01-21 18:53:55
After closing its Palo Alto store, another Fry's Electronics just closed in Georgia. And even more upheaval may be coming -- this time in the heart of Silicon Valley at another Maya-themed store in San Jose.
The beloved geek shopping emporium sprawls across 19.7 acres of prime Silicon Valley real estate, which also houses Fry's corporate headquarters (and a failed arena football team). But earlier this month a sharp reporter at San Jose's Mercury News noted a hungry real estate developer was eyeing the location -- and uncovered some new City Hall documents requesting a change of zoning.
Prologis already manages $111 billion worth of other properties around the world, reports the Mercury News, adding that Fry's "has been forced to confront widening challenges during a retail apocalypse" -- people buying goods online instead of going to a specialty store. The San Francisco Chronicle note we've already seen the end of Circuit City, CompUSA, Computer City, and Incredible Universe. And of course, Radio Shack's legendary two bankruptcies after 94 years of business have reduced the once-iconic geek brand into a store-within-a-store at 100 HobbyTowns across America. There were still 425 independent dealers who were keeping the brand alive as of 2017 -- and a new store actually opened in 2018 Pocatello, Idaho.)
There's still dozens of Fry's Electronics stores "from California to Georgia," reports the Chronicle, "including seven in the Bay Area." But their shelves are often empty, leaving geeks to wonder if the store is headed for disaster. Fry's told the Chronicle that they're trying to switch to a "consignment" model (which "sound suspicious," a retail analyst at Forrester Research told the newspaper, "because it suggests a cash crunch.")
And this month another Fry's Electronics also closed in Duluth, Georgia, in a location Wikipedia describes as "a distressed shopping mall."
All I know is that after 30 years Fry's closed the iconic Palo Alto store that I remembered this month, prompting a flood of memories from geeks who had fondly cherished its endearingly cheesey "wild west" decorations. Even Elon Musk reacted to the news. "Wow, I built my first server room with parts from Fry's," he posted on Twitter, in response to a post on Slashdot. "Ending of an era."
And that same store even turned up in Douglas Coupland 1995 novel Microserfs (which mentions the store's model train mock-up of a Wild West "Canyon City"):
Most guys have about 73 calories of shopping energy, and once these calories are gone, they're gone for the day -- if not the week -- and can't be regenerated simply by having an Orange Julius at the Food Fair. Therefore, to get guys to shop, a store has to eat up all of their Male Shopping Energy calories in one crack-like burst. Thus, Fry's concentrates only on male-specfic consumables insides their cavernous shopping arena, aisles replete with dandruff, bad outfits, and neradcious mutterings full of buried Hobbit references.
Near the EPROM shelves, Karla, Todd, and I were marveling at the pyramids of Hostess products, the miles of computing magazines, the cascade of nerdiana lifestyle accessories: telecom wiring supplies, clips, pornography, razors, Doritos, chemicals for etching boards, and all the components of the intangible Rube Goldberg machines that lie just beneath the Stealth black plastic exterior of the latest $1,299.99 gizmo...
Despite everyone's fond memories, I have to admit: It's been years since I've been there. Most of my geek stuff now just gets delivered to my doorstep, including my last three laptop computers and even my last desktop system. Maybe over the years we've all been swept away from our geeky roots, dimly aware that something's changing, but never quite able to put our finger on it.
But even so, "It's a sad day when Fry's start to vanish in the Valley..." posted one commenter on the Mercury News site. "We seem to be moving into generations that aren't up to doing anything themselves. There was a time when colleagues considered me lazy for buying an existing system and upgrading instead of building from scratch.
"I doubt many of the younger people in tech these days could swap out a board if their lives depended on it."
T O P S T O R I E S
California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
A glory hole at Napa's Lake Berryessa is drawing huge crowds. According to Chris Lee, the general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, the glory hole hasn't been active since 2019, and only restarted operations on Feb 4. (More...)
Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
Republican State Senator Justin Eichorn of Minnesota was arrested for soliciting a teen girl on Monday just hours after he introduced a bill proposing "Trump derangement syndrome" (TDS) as a form of mental illness. (More...)
Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
Delusional rich man tries to fire town staff
"I'm mayor now" said write-in mayoral candidate and founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks Robert Ehrlich after losing the election for Mayor of Sea Cliff, NY. Then he tried to take over the Village Hall and fire everyone. (More...)
Musk claims Xitter security is staffed by idiots
Earlier this month Xitter experienced a massive outage. In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area." (More...)
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Clowns Take on God in Mysterious Annual Ceremony
Last Sunday's (the 6th) Grimaldi Service at a small church in East London was a red-letter day for clowns worldwide. About a hundred old-school red-nosed clowns made the sombre trip to darkest Dalston to pay their respects to clowns who died in the last year and to thank God for the gift of laughter in a bizarre ceremony presided over by the eccentric Reverend Clown Roly, resplendent in a garish red lumberjack shirt with oversized gold lapels. (More...)
My dear and close friend, Porn Maven Shannon Mariemont, sent me a titillating message the other day about her new project: the PornOrchestra. Her desire, at most, is to reinvent the porn soundtrack and, at least, to receive a cease-and-desist order like all her cool friends did last year. (More...)
Johnny Royale loves his Trackman ultra pointer thingy. It's coolio! Read all about it! (More...)
During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
Vacationing from Somnambulant Narrow Realities
So about six months ago, I was chilling in Chang Mai, Thailand with ICBINJ, perursing the Bangkok Times over my banana pancake and Big Chang breakfast when I spotted this article reprinted from the LA Times. It was about some kooks from California (where else?) who were claiming to have been to the front lines in Afgahnistan in mid-December and had recorded the whole feat on their website. "Holy Fuck!" I thought, "Now That's web journalism. Who are these guys!?" (More...)