ABOVE: Radio Shack, maybe one of many that will be closing...

Made a recent visit to my local Radio Shack, maybe the last one (who knows, 0)

Someone said losing Radio Shack was like saying farewell to the Twentieth Century

As usual, when I went there they were very friendly and helpful..I have always known I could get a better deal online or at some other store way downtown...but I have remained mostly a faithful Radio Shack customer.--(sigh)

This time I was there because I could not for the life of me get the stupid alarm on my funky old back up cell phone to stop going off in the middle of the night...as some people have bad hair days (most of my days are bad hair days now that I think of it) anyway, I also have "bad tech" days when machines or gadgets of all kinds thwart me or seem to be out to get me! I forget the most basic things..anyway, it isn't dementia yet, I don't think, I have always been this way.

An old high school friend just emailed me and asked if I remembered my high school lock combination for my locker..Hell, no! ( he remembers his of course). I have had all sorts of locks mostly for gyms and swimming pools and then I lose them and have to buy another lock and write down the combination immediately..

Let's not get into my hassles with Passwords...

Yet I can remember things like Newton's Laws of Gravitation and Motion and all sorts of useless facts...easier just to google everything, new information is flooding in every day, especially with tech and science topics.

Well, then, off to the friendly neighborhood Firehouse on West 100th Street where I wanted to ask about the Thawing Unit there but the FF's had all just come back from an emergency run and it wasn't a good time..did get my picture taken with one rig, though

SEE VIDEO AT:

http://youtu.be/sHEfUo02jG8

RadioShack

Electronics retailer company
RadioShack Corporation is a bankrupt American electronics retail franchise. Founded in 1921, its stores operate in the United States and Mexico. The chain left the United Kingdom in 1999, Australia in 2002 and Canada in 2004.Wikipedia
Stock price: RSH (OTCMKTS) $0.13 +0.03 (+35.05%)
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Customer service: 1 (800) 843-7422
CEO: Joseph C. Magnacca
Founded: 1921
Founders: Milton Deutschmann, Theodore Deutschmann
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RadioShack

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Your next project could be one that changes the world! We'd love to hear about your latest breakthrough, or if you need advice on making your big idea a reality, ... 11 hours ago

Now, here is latest story on Radio Shack from Wall Street Journal

RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated

Chain Built Itself as Hub of Leisure Activities Enjoyed to a Degree Now Hard to Fathom

CHRISTOPHER MIMS

Feb. 8, 2015 7:30 p.m. ET

12 COMMENTS

In 1963, the year his company bought a nine-store chain then known by the two-word name Radio Shack, Charles D. Tandy explained to the New York Times why it made perfect sense for a retailer of do-it-yourself leather handicrafts to buy an electronics distributor.

“Leisure time is opening markets to us,” he told the Times. “The shorter workweek, human curiosity, idle hands—all offer opportunities in this business. Everyone’s spare time is our challenge.”

What Mr. Tandy couldn’t know was that the real challenge his company would eventually face was the slow erosion of the very leisure time his company profited from by filling. The company, now known as RadioShack , filed for bankruptcy protection last week.

It’s hard to believe this now, but according to “The Overworked American,” by Boston College professor of sociology Juliet Schor, in the 1950s the shrinking workweek meant universities sprouted departments of leisure studies, to figure out what Americans would soon be doing with their ever-expanding supply of free time.

Then, in about 1970, the trend reversed, and the workweek of the average American began to grow longer.

Photos: Radio Days

RadioShack’s Transformation From a Boston Seller of Radio Gear Into a Nationwide Retailer Tracks the Personal-Technology Revolution. Here’s a Look at Its 94 Years in Business.

RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 5, 2015 after reaching a deal to sell as many as 2,400 of its stores to hedge fund Standard General.

A radio operator and observer in a radio shack at Ivalo, almost 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, about 1950. Two brothers opened a store in Boston in 1921 catering to the ham radio community. They named it Radio Shack.

In 1977, RadioShack introduced the TRS-80, the first pre-assembled small computer on the market. The computer ran on the Level II BASIC operating system designed by Bill Gates. It came with 4k RAM, a monitor, a cassette and all cables and adaptors needed, and it sold for $599.95.

RadioShack salesman Steven Carlozzi, right, of Brockton, Mass., demonstrates the TRS-80 at the Boston Computer Show in August 1977. Over the next 10 years, RadioShack introduced a laptop, the Model 100, and started selling mobile phones.

A Tandy PC-8 Pocket Computer. RadioShack enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s as its products were considered cutting edge. Its sales weakened in recent years as the electronics business became more competitive, and the chain’s offerings failed to adapt.

In a 2014 Super Bowl ad, RadioShack enlisted well-known 1980s personalities to poke fun at its outdated image. The company promised a new look, but it didn’t redesign enough stores and the effort fell flat.

RadioShack's stock closed below $1 a share for the first time in its history on June 20, 2014, reflecting investors' concern about the future of the long-struggling chain.

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A radio operator and observer in a radio shack at Ivalo, almost 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, about 1950. Two brothers opened a store in Boston in 1921 catering to the ham ...

In 1977, RadioShack introduced the TRS-80, the first pre-assembled small computer on the market. The computer ran on the Level II BASIC operating system designed by Bill Gates. It came with 4k RAM, a monitor, a cassette and all cables and adaptors needed, and it sold for $599.95.SSPL/GETTY IMAGES

RadioShack salesman Steven Carlozzi, right, of Brockton, Mass., demonstrates the TRS-80 at the Boston Computer Show in August 1977. Over the next 10 years, RadioShack introduced a laptop, the Model 100, and started selling mobile phones. ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Tandy PC-8 Pocket Computer. RadioShack enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s as its products were considered cutting edge. Its sales weakened in recent years as the electronics business became more competitive, and the chain’s offerings failed to adapt. KEITH D. TYLER

In a 2014 Super Bowl ad, RadioShack enlisted well-known 1980s personalities to poke fun at its outdated image. The company promised a new look, but it didn’t redesign enough stores and the effort fell flat. RADIOSHACK

RadioShack's stock closed below $1 a share for the first time in its history on June 20, 2014, reflecting investors' concern about the future of the long-struggling chain. RICHARD DREW/ASSOCIATED PRESS

RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 5, 2015 after reaching a deal to sell as many as 2,400 of its stores to hedge fund Standard General. CRAIG WARGA/BLOOMBERG

In 1979 the average worker put in 1,687 hours a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and by 2007 that number was 1,868. The net difference, 181 hours a year, represents more than a month of extra work every year.

Not coincidentally, the 1970s were RadioShack’s biggest decade, and at one point the chain was opening three stores a week. At its peak, it had 7,000 stores. That success was built primarily on the back of citizens’ band radio hobbyists, who bought components from the store and relied on the knowledge of its staff, many of whom were franchisees and devoted hobbyists themselves.

REMEMBERING RADIOSHACK

Do you remember your first RadioShack purchase? Was it your go-to store for gadgets, toys and high-tech gifts? Share a personal story or memory of the retailer.

But the PCs these pioneers created and popularized replaced weekend hardware projects with basement coding sessions. These still required time, but were mostly the domain of those young enough to still have some claim to leisure. The influence of technology spread, but not, in the same proportion, the priesthood of hardware hackers who made it possible.

As the business of selling parts to hobbyists declined, sales of PCs, and later phones, began to fill the breach. In 1984, RadioShack sold its first mobile phone. And as anyone who walked into one of the company’s stores in the past decade knows, by the end mobile phones felt like the only thing any of RadioShack’s salespeople were incentivized to sell.

RadioShack had an incredible asset in its portfolio of real estate, allowing the company to limp along for decades with lower per-square-foot sales than comparable retailers. But that asset could only delay the inevitable.

RadioShack was once a cultural phenomenon—a place with a unique geographic but also psychological reach, a hub of one of the many leisure-time activities Americans once enjoyed to a degree it’s hard to fathom now, in a time when apps allow those of us with more money than time to outsource even the minutest details of our lives. RadioShack, in turn, had no choice but to become a retailer, a place that sold electronics devoted primarily to consumption.

It’s also true that the hobbyist wares that were the heart of RadioShack are now available on the infinite catalog known as the Internet. But the modern incarnation of the RadioShack hobbyist—the so-called maker—has remained a niche phenomenon in the U.S.

Make magazine, the movement’s bible, has a circulation of only 125,000, whereas RadioShack’s instructional manuals, sold in every store, were printed by the millions when America’s population was about two-thirds what it is now. Just before RadioShack announced its bankruptcy-court filing, it became partners with companies such as Make and LittleBits to sell electronics and robotics kits that felt like a modern revival of what RadioShack once represented, but in 2015 there isn’t enough interest in—or time for—such pastimes to sustain a company the size of RadioShack.

Dale Dougherty, who founded Make magazine, told me that many in the maker movement can’t comprehend why their beloved RadioShack is failing.

“To see it go away is almost to potentially extinguish something that allowed people in almost any place in America to build or repair something,” says Mr. Dougherty.

But that’s the crucial question: How did we arrive at a culture of disposable everything? The simplest answer is that we no longer have time for anything else.

—Follow Christopher Mims on Twitter @Mims or write to him atchristopher.mims@wsj.com.

There are 12 comments.

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Charles Pisano1 hour ago

Chain Built Itself as Hub of Leisure Activities Enjoyed to a Degree Now Hard to Fathom"

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Explain the gaming industry then. When I was in 'in home sales' I had to compete w/ a lot of that in addition to all the old stuff, TV, phone, family intrusions. I think RS missed a few trends along the way. Still a good run. I'd take it.

David Smith4 hours ago

Just about everything in Radio Shack can be bought elsewhere, in more attractive stores. But some things will now be available, sight unseen, no expertise attached, returnable only by mail, only over the Internet. This is part of the dumbing down of retail.