[conspire] (forw) The "Fry's Experience" is gone

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

>  Thank you for the details.  I was living in MV back then.  I recall
>  the existence for Fry's grocery, but it I didn't go there very
>  often.  Possibly it was on Grant near El Camino.   During the
>  personal computer boom of the 1980's, I too was told of the Fry's
>  Electronics somewhere off Lawrence Expy.   Chips and DIP's would be
>  an accurate description of the merchandise.   I have a pretty good
>  mental map.  So many years later, I drove around trying to find the
>  original store.  I was sure I was in the right neighborhood, but I
>  couldn't find it.  I was indeed looking in the general vicinity of
>  Fault Line.

I did a bit of additional, idle checking.  Its street address was
technically 541 Lakeview Drive, set well back from Lakeview's southwest
corner with Oakmead Parkway.  I remembered it as being on Oakmead
because you could approach across a long parking lot from there.

That address is now the corporate office of "Thermo Fisher Scientific
B8", and, going by online photos, I'm pretty sure the Fry's repurposed
grocery store got razed and replaced with the current light-industry /
office structure.

> As for returned merchandise.  Maybe 10 years ago, I bought some
> electronics box.  It didn't work.  It also had a rattle of loose parts
> inside.  I returned it.  A week later, I went back hoping to find a
> new one on the shelf.  There was one on the shelf.  I picked it up and
> shook it.  Yup, it rattled.

One of the many anti-nostalgia anecdotes I read this morning about Fry's 
returns practices went like this:  I bought a piece of electronics from 
Fry's, but upon arriving home and opening the box, I found in it just a
couple of rocks wrapped in an old sock.  So, I took it back, showed the 
proof that they'd put a returned item right back onto the shelf, and the
manager tried to accuse me of cheekily ripping off the store, which
impliedly is what the prior customer pulled off.

> A couple years ago, there was some angst because the Palo Alto store would be closing.  The official explanation was that this was forced by advocates of affordable housing.   

Eh, that's not exactly what I heard.  The story was that their lease
from Sobrante Organization was coming to an end, and the _latter_ firm
simply wants to raze and redevelop the site (which Conspire members may
recall is the hulking remains of a historic fruit-canning plant).

> Another time, I went to the Sunnyvale Fry's and was surprised at the
> number of empty shelves.  The official explanation was that they were
> changing suppliers because of increased tariffs on imports.  They
> would be re-stocked real soon.  The Chinese trade-war / tariff thing
> started in mid-2018.  This visit was a few months later.

That explanation was semi-accurate but not the full truth.  As part of
merciless costcutting, management decided to switch to a
almost-100%-consignment model, so that Fry's no longer had to finance
significant inventory cost.  This was a sure sign that they were
sinking.

As you suggested upthread, their remaining assets are basicallly just
the real estate.  I'm guessing few of the present buildings are going to 
remain intact, though I could be wrong.