I remember puzzling over everything in the store as a kid, it was fascinating and I couldn't afford anything but the free catalogs. I knew those super-dooper expensive computers were the future. (Eventually built a Heathkit AM radio).
Kit electronics aren't dead, they're just ... resting.
Elecraft (http://www.elecraft.com/) is the spiritual successor of Heathkit, at least in terms of some of the Ham radio kits. They're not cheap and contain a lot of ASICs, so you're not really putting them together from bare components, but it's still a fair bit of work with the 'ol soldering iron.
There are sometimes similar things for other test equipment. The key indicators of whether you can find something in kit form are: 1) is it expensive to buy assembled? 2) is it expensive less because of the underlying technology than because of manufacturer markup? 3) is it something that a lot of hobbyists would want to own?
Hence a lot of oscilloscope and function-generator and counter kits, some radio kits, but not so many digital camera kits. I have seen an increasing number of MP3 player kits though, which is interesting; it suggests that the underlying parts aren't the main cost drivers anymore.
I think the prevalence of MP3 player kits is tied to the fact that they are simple, and nearly everyone can enjoy a MP3 player, so it seems like it has become a little bit of the hobbyist hardware equivalent of "Hello World".
> But it also served as a portent that the hands-on way of life RadioShack embodied would become irrelevant.
Well; yes and no. I think a lot of 'tinkerers' now spend their time hacking. I know I prefer programming to fiddling around with little bits and pieces that have to be bought and assembled. It's a much more "self-sufficient" world in that you don't need to pop out to Radio Shack to buy that little piece you're missing.
Or rather, the little pieces you need are usually libraries or frameworks or freely available software. The open source ecosystem and Google is a developer's Radio Shack.
I'm probably atypical but I got my first two cell phones at Radio Shack yet I still think of them as the place to get LEDs for weird projects or a sterio to mono headphone jack converter. I should take a trip and check out the North Bay store from the article. Sounds like my kind of place.
At least my neck of the woods (New England, well-educated town), electronics tinkering is alive and well, mostly in the form of robotics competitions. There's a _lot_ of robotics clubs around here, starting with Mindstorms and working up to a handful of high-school students who design circuit boards and send their mechanical part designs out to 3D prototyping houses.
Notice, also, the popularity of Make magazine, the Arduino, and the open source hardware movement. (Not to mention the self-replicating 3D printer geeks.)
RadioShack, I think, is largely a victim of Digikey and other online component retailers. It just doesn't make sense to devote much sales space to resistors and bread boards in a modern mall, when you can get any imaginable part shipped to you in a couple of days.
On a related note, if you love(d) RadioShack, be sure to check out Akihabara ('Electric Town') in Tokyo if you ever get a chance. http://www.kirainet.com/english/radio-center/. I have never seen so many electronic components on sale in one place. It was even possible to find "vintage" ICs.
Reminds me a bit of the Yongsan electronics market in Seoul. I've never been in a building before with a hundred different stores selling nothing but PC power supply fans.
I applaud what this guy is doing and I hope he can get new business from it, but for most RadioShacks it's a lost cause.
I was last in a RadioShack a week ago to find a spool of wire-wrap wire. The salesperson didn't even know what I meant, so he just let me look around until I found it. It's kinda sad because I'm old enough to remember being a kid drooling over their huge component selection and going in every day to look at the short wave receiver I wanted for Christmas and being able to have an intelligent conversation about electronics.
But when I bought components yesterday, the $40 or so I spent at BG Micro (http://www.bgmicro.com support these guys, they're nice :-) would have been close to $200 at Radio Shack even back when they carried most of that stuff.
Don't mourn Radio Shack -- experimentation, kits, and hardware hacking is bigger than ever. It's just moved online along with everything else.
Around here, that would be Frys; they carry most popular items from the NTE catalog. I might hate their inventory control methods, but they're the only brick and mortar location I can go to get components anymore, aside from basics that Radio Shacks still carry.
There's also American Science and Surplus for motors and solenoids, but their inventory of used stuff is always a crapshoot.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/30/business/plug-is-pulled-on...
http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/5103/h100cat851.jpg
I remember puzzling over everything in the store as a kid, it was fascinating and I couldn't afford anything but the free catalogs. I knew those super-dooper expensive computers were the future. (Eventually built a Heathkit AM radio).