For 20th century nerds, geeks, tinkerers, and hobbyists, RadioShack was a golden paradise, crammed with electrical components, PC parts, soldering equipment, nuts, bolts, wires, splitters, and just about every random piece of the technological puzzle you might need. But as of Thursday, the once-great business has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and plans to shutter as many as 2,400 of its remaining stores, and sell the rest to Sprint. It is a sad day indeed, but the truth is that everybody saw this coming for the last decade, and in some ways, you might even say that RadioShack deserves its fate.
You see, from 1921 through the mid-'90s, the ‘Shack was perfectly emblematic of the rise of tech tinkerers. Everybody who ever built anything small that ran on electricity —radios, microcomputers, processors, what have you — relied on RadioShack to fill in the missing pieces immediately. Sending out for parts from a catalogue was possible, but aggravating, and could slow a project into stagnation. RadioShack meant that any resistors, diodes, op-amps, or breadboards were available at a moment’s notice — not to mention cassettes and cassette players, blank discs and Discmans. RadioShack even had its own line of computers in the late '70s.
We used to love RadioShack. But as the century came to a close, Best Buy and Circuit City (RIP) expanded their electronics sections, and the internet gained a prioritized stronghold amongst techies, RadioShack began to panic as their sales fell dramatically. So they revolutionized their inventory, tried to mimic their supposed competition, and began stocking video games and smartphones, and ignoring the 96¢ diode market. But of course, nobody was interested in a smaller, more expensive, tucked-away-in-some-corner-of-the-mall phone store, and profits continued to disappear. By the time they realized their grand mistake and attempted a second rebranding, it was way too late, and Amazon was already offering same day delivery. Perhaps the death of RadioShack was our fault. We could’ve done more to save it, we could’ve bought a little extra wire, or a few more batteries.
And despite about 1,750 stores staying in business around the country for the time being, it appears that existing SF RadioShacks on Lombard, Geary, Mission, San Bruno, Lakeshore, West Portal, and Market will be gone forever. Rest in peace you old nerds, we’ll miss what you used to be, and forget what you became.
[h/t Gawker, photo by Mike Mozart/Flickr]
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