All Electronics in LA is CLOSING

[charliex]

 i really miss (or at least did before mass internets) the computer literacy bookstore, when i visited from the UK for the first time i was blown away , also wierd stuff was great too.

we still have places a bit like wierd stuff in LA, but not quite. i often wonder how much the prop industry keeps them up, they're pretty much all in the same areas ( but that's also because it's a cheap warehouse space)


i needed some solder paste this morning since i forgot to order early enough for SMT supplies to send me a fresh batch and all mine are a tad out of date. i can walk from my house to a place that carries it, so there are still places around ( coincidence it is so close), but i can also overnight it from amazon and get it around 4AM and take the risk on the date code, hard to beat that. I went out and picked up 5 gallons of vasco 7000 this morning as well, its nice to live next to an industrial area. took me a week + high shipping costs to get 5 gallons of cimcool last time via the internets and i'm waiting on a mouser order that had batteries so it shipped ground, got delayed at the depot so its been a week to get it. we ordered reels of leds from aliexpress at the same time and they got here faster than mouser.  its such a mixed bag lately.

[nctnico]

When I heard LA, I suspected something like that.
Hard to know what's worse, LA or San Fran?

These days Silicon Valley is a wasteland as far as retail electronics and surplus stores go.

At one time the Bay Area had six Fry's Electronics stores, Microcenter, Halted Specialties, R&D Electronics, several Computer Literacy bookshops, Digital Guru, Ham Radio outlet, Weird Stuff Warehouse, Anchor Electronics, and a few others. All of these, with the exception of Anchor Electronics, are gone. 

Online simply offers a better selection. Last month I visited an electronics shop in Taipei called 'Jin Hua' which seemed to be the last one of its kind over there. They have a lot of stuff (including 0402 sized resistors and capacitors) and a reasonable selection of test equipment as well. But realistically most of the parts they sold can also be bought from Aliexpress for 60% less if you can wait.

[charliex]

yeah even akihabara isn't what it was.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Online simply offers a better selection.

Right, but it was a lot of fun to spend a Saturday visiting these stores with my son browsing the aisles, especially the surplus places, which always had a different mix of stuff. I miss that.

Every generation seems to have similar experiences. In my dad's day, it was Radio Row in NYC on Cortlandt Street with all of its radio and electronics stores, now all gone.