[sf-lug] Fry's now *permanently* shutting down

[Todd Hawley]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 8:07 AM Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com>
wrote:

>
>      Well I remember it very well.  At one point I had stacks of Computer
> Shopper
> with it nearly incomprehensible to my eyes pages of Postscript code, tons
> of
> classified advertisements for all sorts of peripherals, copious pages of
> advertisement for the laterst high powered CPM machines with fast
> processors and
> 4(count them) 5.25 Floppy disk drives.
>

I remember Computer Shopper. It was huge at one time. I also remember the
page long
ads Fry's ran all the time in various publications. It was always cool to
see what the
going prices were for various pieces of computer hardware.

NOTE: I tried sending the rest of this email the other night but it never
appeared. I even checked the
linuxmafia archive and it wasn't there either. Strange.

As far as Fry's itself goes, I would readily agree with Rick's assessment
of Fry's from the other day.
Mostly crap on their shelves.Two decades ago, they probably still had at
least some good stuff. Not so
much since then. Back around 2012 I was taking a computer class at CCSF and
the teacher organized
a trip to the Palo Alto Fry's. I chose not to go, although given the Wild
West theme that store had, now I'm
sorry I didn't go see that. I'd heard rumors Fry's would cheerfully take
any defective merchandise you bought
there, give you a refund and then put it back on the shelf.

I used to live near the one in Fremont. I occasionally would go in there
but never saw much of anything that
I couldn't find at the same price or cheaper elsewhere and probably not
defective either. I think that was why I
never bought much there, I didn't trust them. I do remember how mobbed that
store was on Black Friday. So
mobbed that shoppers would illegally park near the store just so they could
get in. Office buildings across the
street would put chains up across their parking lots so no one could park
there. This was not lost on the Fremont
police department who would gladly leave parking citations on all the
offending vehicles. I even went by there on a
couple Black Fridays and watched the spectacle unfold. 3 or 4 cop cars
driving past every few minutes checking
to see if any new shoppers had pulled into an illegal parking area. Great
fun. I have to wonder if they were a bit
sad to hear about a one-day "revenue source" each year now disappearing. :p

The Fry's in North San Jose was in a building that once housed the
Televideo computer terminal company back
in the 80's and 90s. Having driven past that building back then several
times, it was a bit of a shock at first to see
the huge Fry's sign there. Now it will join the other empty office
buildings along 880 in the south end of Fremont
and north end of San Jose.

It was a fun place to go to and walk around in but like I said never really
found much I couldn't find elsewhere. And
clearly the chain had been going downhill for quite some time.

-th
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/attachments/20210226/3b23f0b7/attachment.html>