{"by":"SwellJoe","id":738839,"kids":[738856],"parent":738812,"text":"The reason I stopped going to Radio Shack was because they turned into a bigger version of the shopping mall cell phone kiosk. High pressure sales people looking to sell me a phone, every time I walked in the door, and high ticket consumer items pushed the project kits and electronic components into the ghetto in the back corner of the store. Radio Shack was no longer a fun place to browse, and rarely had the things I went looking for in stock. In Houston I shopped at EPO and in Austin and here in Mountain View at Fry's. I have to drive a little further, but they don't try to sell me a bunch of crap, and they have a wide variety of cool stuff to look at.<p>I simply never think, \"I know, I'll go to Radio Shack!\" It's been at <i>least</i> ten years since that's been my first instinct when I needed something electronic.<p>I also hold a bit of a grudge against Radio Shack because when I was about 15, a sales guy talked down to me about some device or other (maybe an oscilloscope or a DMM or something; both of which I'd been using for several years at that point) as though I was too much of an idiot to even be looking at it, much less touching it. My dad was browsing nearby, overheard, and laughed at him and explained that he'd be willing to wager that I knew more about the device than the sales guy did. I got a lot of that kind of thing from grownups back then (I had hair down to my waist and wore metal T-shirts all the time), but rarely from fellow nerds, and so I was irritated when it happened at one of my favorite places to poke around, and where most of the people who worked their knew me and were always friendly.<p>Anyway, it's funny that this article brought back this flood of memories about a store I haven't visited in many years (but throughout my childhood visited every couple of weeks).","time":1249288371,"type":"comment"}