So long, Fry's. It was real.

Welp, no more. I believe the laptop stand here on my desk came from a Fry's. Or maybe the one at the office did. Well, one of them was purchased IRL at a Fry's. 

Many an hour spent wandering Fry's with my brother. Plus they sold Jolly Ranchers, too. (I know, not hard to find, but always a plus to a visit.)

I hope Micro Center expands to more locations to make up for the loss of Fry's.

First Radio Shack. Now Fry's. 

There really is no brick and mortar electronics store left. But the Fry's near my house was half empty a year ago. They weren't restocking things and they didn't know when more stock would come in. So this is no surprise. They were almost as dead as the Sears store. I am going to miss that place. It was Incredible Universe before it was a Fry's. They kept the fake cows over the entrance and the Western Decor. They really had stuff you couldn't find anywhere else. 

Who knows what it will be next. Probably a huge empty building with an even bigger parking lot surrounded by Tote Your Note car lots. 

Ever closer to just one store.

In reply to Appleseed :

Fry's was the just one store. Like if best buy, radio shack, and newegg had a 100k square foot baby. Sometimes with a train crashing through the building.

One of my favorite and most missed places from my time out west. 

We never had Frys around here.  Way too many Radio Shacks, but not any Frys.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

First Radio Shack. Now Fry's. 

There really is no brick and mortar electronics store left. But the Fry's near my house was half empty a year ago. They weren't restocking things and they didn't know when more stock would come in. So this is no surprise. They were almost as dead as the Sears store. I am going to miss that place. It was Incredible Universe before it was a Fry's. They kept the fake cows over the entrance and the Western Decor. They really had stuff you couldn't find anywhere else. 

Who knows what it will be next. Probably a huge empty building with an even bigger parking lot surrounded by Tote Your Note car lots. 

The one near my house was an Ultimate Electronics before Frys.  The computer I am typing this on was built years ago from components loaded into a cart and checked out at an actual register.  To think back, my 04 Dodge was stolen out of the parking lot on black Friday in '08.  It was like the Fleet Farm of electronics stores.  Will be missed.

Man... I miss Fry's.  That store was like the WalMart of nerdly awesomeness.  The one in Pflugerville/Wells Branch had an entire row of just resistors.  I remember buying an external HD enclosure there because they were having some insane sale on 2TB Seagate HDDs.  I paid the same for the enclosure as i did for the HD... not because the box was expensive, because the HDs were so cheap.

Radio Shack times eleventy.  I loved those stores.

The one in Burbank has an Alien theme with a UFO crashing into the front of the building.

I think I may have been in the first one.  It was in Santa Clara (Silicone Valley) right?

I loved going to Fry's in the 90s and early 2000s, friends and I would go there on a Saturday afternoon and spend a couple hours wandering around window shopping.  I miss those days, nostalgia for youth I guess.  Realistically I'm much happier being able to order exactly the parts I want online without having to find parking, stand in long lines, deal with buying the results of someone's "Fry's return upgrade", etc.

And that's why Fry's has been on a gradual decline for at least the last 15 years.  It used to be that the stores had 8 foot high shelving units lining the aisles, packed with merchandise.  Then those became 7 foot, then 6, then you could see over them into the next aisle.  This was to avoid the appearance of empty shelves without shrinking the store footprint, they also started taking big sections of the store and converting them to selling stuff that took up lots of floorspace but didn't sell very often (mattresses, for example).  Finally they ran out of tricks and just started having empty space.

aircooled said:

I think I may have been in the first one.  It was in Santa Clara (Silicone Valley) right?

"Silicone Valley" is Hollywood, lose the 'e' if you want the bay area. :)

I believe the first store was in Sunnyvale, just off Lawrence Expressway near 101.  It moved across the street in the early 90s (to a bigger store, which is now a Sports Basement), and then moved a couple more blocks to the current location on Arques (in a Home Depot-sized store) sometime in the mid 2000s.

I loved going to the store in Campbell, CA back in the days and roaming around. Will be missed..

Dang. Put me in the camp of people who missed Fry's after moving out east.

Appleseed said:

Ever closer to just one store.

That's the 'Zon warehouse mothership.

this was mine in roseville California