Fry's ...Bye Bye!!

[jjohnson873]

Fry's Electronics closes all of its stores.

A sad ending. I'm sure there are many stories about Fry's from the HP community.

[John Keith]

Not surprising, I was in a Fry's a couple of months ago and it looked like it was days away from closing.

[Dave Frederickson]

I remember all the funny typos in the Fry's ads that would be published in the Abort, Retry, Fail column of PC Magazine.

[bbergman]

My first experience was with the Sunnyvale Fry's in 1979. It's where I got my beloved HP-41c, and all accessories.

If they open back up again for a liquidation sale, I'm going to go in there and buy any HP calculator I see, so I can say that my first ever, and last ever, purchases at Fry's were HP calculators.

Sad...

[KeithB]

I don't have one locally, but I have a love/hate relationship with Fry's. They had a lot of stuff, but when you returned something you felt like a crook.

[Jonathan Busby]

(02-24-2021 08:41 PM)jjohnson873 Wrote:  Fry's Electronics closes all of its stores.

A sad ending. I'm sure there are many stories about Fry's from the HP community.

Many stories indeed One example would be when I bought ( yet another ) HP48GX from Fry's as they were discounted probably because they were just about to be discontinued. I *should* have bought the whole rack of dozens of HP48GXs in their blister packs and then re-sold them for maybe $350 to $650 a piece ( Something similar happened with the HP 42S : If you look in the MoHPC forum archives on hpcalc.org ( thanks to Eric Rechlin for the archives : the URL for my post is https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum/...l#pid17748), then you'll see that I was one of the first people to discover that HP had a large stock of absolutely new HP42Ss available from their "PartSurfer" service for warranty replacement reasons. The part number for the 42Ss was actually for the 42S service manual, but, there was a glitch in HP's system and that part was actually a 42S. You can probably imagine how surprised I was when I received the package from HP expecting a 42S service manual and then finding that HP had sent me an actual brand new 42S! So, I had one more 42S to add to my collection, *but*, what I should have have done was bought them *all* and then re-sold them Well, what I should have *really*, **really** done was bought ten million Bitcoins back in 2010 when they were only around $0.0008 USD cents a Bitcoin, but, we all probably thought that at some point )

Regards,

Jonathan

[mfleming]

(02-24-2021 08:41 PM)jjohnson873 Wrote:  Fry's Electronics closes all of its stores.

A sad ending. I'm sure there are many stories about Fry's from the HP community.

In the late 90's, some coworkers and I would wolf down lunch then walk over to the Palo Alto store. Man, you could get lost in there. You could judge the state of the economy by the number of cars in the parking lot. The fascination with computers and electronics back then has dissipated these days, like the muscle car craze decades ago. And <sniff> calculators...

[Dave Frederickson]

There was a list, You Must Live in the Bay Area If ... An item on the list was,
You think it's okay to leave work to go to Fry's and so does your boss.

[Gamo]

Used to wait for the Fry's Electronic two pages advertisment every Friday in

The Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Gamo

[KimH]

I used to visit Palo Alto frequently and always made sure I had a few hours to browse their shelves. Not needing anything I always walked out with something really cool which I couldn’t find in Europe

[Steve Simpkin]

I have a lot of fond memories of Fry's Electronics in the 90's. Just like I had fond memories of Radio Shack, dedicated calculator stores, electronics parts stores, home computer stores, The Federated Group, Circuit City, Comp USA and others that I frequented in the Los Angeles area since the 70's. All gone now.

[Jake Schwartz]

Hi - I've been attending the Winter CES show in Las Vegas since 1983 and probably went to Fry's in Vegas at least every CES trip over the past ten or fifteen years. Always a place to find something unexpected. The last couple of years (with the exception of last month, when the CES was only virtual), I ended up going to Fry's a couple of times for one reason or another...always fun. Back in 2005, during the HHC2005 calc conference in the Chicago area during one break, a bunch of us drove a "car caravan" to the nearby Fry's store in Downer's Grove, Illinois. Definitely memorable.

Jake

[cdmackay]

(02-25-2021 06:57 AM)KimH Wrote:  I used to visit Palo Alto frequently and always made sure I had a few hours to browse their shelves. Not needing anything I always walked out with something really cool which I couldn’t find in Europe

yup, same here, many times.

I also liked the huge store with the Aztec-style front entrance; can't remember if that was PA, Sunnyvale, or SJ?

[Dave Frederickson]

(02-25-2021 08:38 PM)cdmackay Wrote:  I also liked the huge store with the Aztec-style front entrance; can't remember if that was PA, Sunnyvale, or SJ?

All the store themes are listed here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Electronics

The San Diego store, previously an Incredible Universe, was for a long time "a work in progress". A few years ago there were some indications it was going to get a Top Gun theme and they put up a few pictures, but Wikipedia lists it as Aircraft Carrier.

Speaking of entrances, the San Marcos has two Jacob's Ladders for the Atlantis theme that are around 30 ft tall. They had to stop operating them because they were interfering with the aircraft flying in and out of the nearby airport.

[Albert Chan]

(02-25-2021 07:39 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  I have a lot of fond memories of Fry's Electronics in the 90's. Just like I had fond memories of Radio Shack, dedicated calculator stores, electronics parts stores, home computer stores, The Federated Group, Circuit City, Comp USA and others that I frequented in the Los Angeles area since the 70's. All gone now.

Many "customers" go to electronics stores to see/touch the actual products, play with it ...
But, they just walk out and order from the internet.

Even with shipping cost, it is much cheaper than retail price.
May be this is why these stores are all gone now.

For the same reason, almost all bookstores in my area were out of business.

[Garth Wilson]

As a kid, I was in another country where electronics shops were few and small yet seemed wonderful as I was new to the field. I couldn't afford much on my weekly allowance. We came back to the States in 1974, and I "discovered" Radio Shack, Lafayette, and others. Within bike-riding distance, there were about a dozen electronics shops, including surplus, sole-proprietor, and chain stores. It was wonderful; yet there were times I needed something they didn't have. I found an old Newark catalog, so I wrote to them and asked if they were still in business. Dumb question; but we didn't have the internet yet, and long-distance phone calls were expensive and audio quality wasn't the best when you're calling someone a couple thousand miles away. I got a new catalog. I also found out about Poly Pacs (sp?), Burstein-Applebee, and maybe another one or two, from ads in hobbyist electronics magazines I saw at the library. I'd browse a catalog, fill out an order sheet, figure out the shipping weight and cost, and sales tax if it was in our state, hope I did it all right, and give my parents the cash and have them write me a check, send it off, wait for it to clear, wait for shipping which was slower than today's and had no tracking, etc..

Things changed over the years. 35 years ago I wanted a credit card, not to borrow on, but rather so I could call up a supplier and order things and have them shipped the same day. It was hard to get a credit card when I had never had any credit; but after my wife and I bought the house in '91, everybody and their dog was offering us credit cards.

Shamefully, the local high school and community college dropped their electronics classes. TVs, stereos, and other things were no longer getting fixed (only replaced). A lot of the hobbyists who were making their own electronics gear either died or started to buy online. Heathkit mostly died, so they weren't getting new people into electronics either. The floor traffic at the local stores that sold electronic parts dried up, and the businesses folded.

There were still a couple of good stores within driving distance, but too far to go on your lunch hour or something like that.

Then Fry's put in a store about five miles away. Wow! So much good stuff!! Aisles of discrete components, ICs, project boxes, tools, materials, test equipment, etc., in addition to the side of the store I hardly paid any attention to which had the appliances, CDs, etc.. I often came away with more than I had on my shopping list, as I saw other neat things I could use.

Gradually the shelves started looking kind of bare, and there was less floor traffic. The last couple of times I was in there, I wondered if they were going to survive. The unfortunate answer has now landed. Yes, I can order online like anyone else; but the last time I was there was for a digital camera when I needed one for work and couldn't wait a couple of days.

(02-25-2021 07:39 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  I have a lot of fond memories of Fry's Electronics in the 90's. Just like I had fond memories of Radio Shack, dedicated calculator stores, electronics parts stores, home computer stores, The Federated Group, Circuit City, Comp USA and others that I frequented in the Los Angeles area since the 70's. All gone now.

[Eddie W. Shore]

I remember buying several HP calculators from Fry's: 35S, 39gs, 10s+, and 12C. I also bought several Cannon calculators there.

My last purchase from the local Industry Fry's included non-alcohol wipes, several masks, and USB drives. And it was sad: no one there, half of the store closed off.

I got to get to the San Jose Fry's once.

[JimP]

Sad end. Although I haven't been in the US in many years I do remember wandering through the Sunnyvale and Palo Alto stores looking at goodies, wondering "what might I find that I can justify purchasing?" and rarely coming away empty-handed. The prices invariably justified the journey....and were much less than the equivalent items might have cost in my home country!

RIP -- it was good to know you.

[Joe Horn]

I agree with Garth Wilson: It's sad, but no surprise. My last purchase there (15 Feb 2019, Fountain Valley, California) was a nice little Grundig "Eton Executive Traveler III" radio for $69.95, and I remember how the store was already half empty by that time. Over the following 12 months (early 2019 - early 2020) the store got even more empty, with most aisles roped off. Since that time, it was just a ghost town, often with me as the only customer and only one person manning the hilariously long line of cash registers. Gary Friedman and others commented how their local Fry's were equally empty. So, yes it's sad, but the writing was already on their huge walls years ago.

[BruceH]

I vaguely remember some HHC conferences where some would go over to Frys for a mooch round before going onto the restaurant for the meal.