Good point. I will say that the share option does require a bit more work. You have to change the dropdown to share on a friend’s page and then type in the friend as opposed to just typing your buddy’s name in the comments.
Maybe they should fix that.
Also, FWIW, I’m pretty sure that the leading technology retailer going under during our most technologically dependent era, can only be explained as a management failure of epic proportions.
“Screw all y’all. I’m gonna go get wasted with Blockbuster Video.” —RS
Tower Records: Hey! Wait up!
But where am I going to go now when I need one diode at 3pm on a Sunday?
LMAO, 'cuz I’m from Detroit, and yeah, that’s a thing, especially when the U of M/OSU game’s about to happen… 
But it’s all good. For one thing, I went to Wayne State. Also one of my favorite rock bands hailed from Cincinnati.
The National, or the Afghan Whigs?
I’d say Over the Rhine, but their fan base is pretty local.
Foxy Shazam. I saw them about five years ago when they opened for the Darkness at St. Andrew’s Hall and they almost stole the show. 
But they broke up/“went on hiatus” a few years ago. For some reason I’ve been listening to them a lot the past few months.
This is what it looks like, folks, when a business is allowed to take the muzzle off for a minute.
Yeah, broadly. But I think there’s a lot of nuance.
The big influence is that big box stores and malls of all types are struggling in the Age of Amazon. Why go to Borders to get books when I can just buy it online and get it delivered? Why to to Radio Shack to pick up my bit of kit when I can just buy it on NewEgg and get it delivered? Convenience is King (and the cost is often lower, too).
RadioShack’s core audience was the proto-Makers, the hobbyist electricians and computer programmers and (as the name suggests) radio enthusiasts. The store utterly failed to keep up with that type of customer (who also tend to be early adopters and have a reasonable amount of expertise before they go to a store in the first place - often more than the salesperson has). To some degree, that market changes so fast that keeping up as a nation-wide retail chain is nigh impossible, anyway. And in a society that is anti-intellectual and with a disappearing middle-class, those kinds of people are increasingly geographically isolated.
There’s also the success of Apple with their “walled garden” approach, where everything you do with your product is branded by your product, that then hedges out third parties who might otherwise provide tinkerers with some product to buy.
I don’t know that even a “correctly managed RadioShack” would avoid the closing of their stores any more than a “correctly managed Blockbuster” would.
Holy shit – I had one of those as a kid. Totally forgot about it until this second!
More championships than the Blue Jackets, too.
edit: Ninja’d by agies by moments! Well played.
But where am I going to go now when I need one diode cell phone at 3pm on a Sunday?
That’s part of the problem. Most local RadioShacks I’ve been to in the last few years had morphed into crappy cell phone stores with an incomplete assortment of other items.
And really, even if phones were a good profit item for RadioShack, why would most people in need of a new phone not just go to the carrier store?
(Also, IIRC, those little components had pretty good profit margins too…)
That’s okay. I’m learning here that sarcastically-bent speculations can lead to unfortunate rants. So many hot-buttons. So much pressing.
Not to be argumentative, but, in all honesty, are you entirely comfortable with “This attitude is perfectly normal for any service industry employee, and if you don’t understand it you need to work more service industry hours” justifying “We closed. Fuck all of you" and “Always hated all you prick customers anyway.”? Because, as I see it, RS failed because it’s business model just didn’t work anymore; to that extent, why should customers be insulted when RS stores close up?
I love Over The Rhine. I’ve seen them play many times when I was living there.
Now that I’m no longer there, I still like their music, but it’s hard for me to listen to because it had such a local flavor.
Retail is shitting the bed. RadioShack has been struggling for a loooooooong time, but I do wonder if it (and the spate of department store closings/bankruptcies inthe 90s) isn’t a bit of a “canary in the coal mine” for retail.
This. They call themselves Radio Shack, but they don’t have the components necessary to build a radio.
A “Radio Shack” with not a single inductor in sight. Imagine that.
They were a fantastic live show. I saw them many times when I lived there, and their Christmas concerts, especially, were just terrific. I remember epic, ten minute long versions of Go Down Easy that blew the audience away. I still enjoy their records, but mostly because of my memories of my time living in Cincinnati and the OTR shows I saw with friends. The same with Katie Reider and Plow On Boy.
Is this where I say that, as a filthy Californian, I love Over the Rhine?
