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Author
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Topic: So Long Radio Shack!
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted March 08, 2015 04:46 PM
They’ve closed our Radio Shack!
(-and a lot of the rest of them too…)
I’ll have to admit, as personal tragedies go, this is pretty light-duty stuff, but it does mean something to me. I’ve been messing around in electronics pretty steadily since I was in elementary school. It was just batteries and bulbs at first. As I got older I got technical instruction in high school, then engineering college then years out in industry. I started out as a hobbyist, but later it was just my job. These past few years I’ve started to build circuitry at home for myself again: a lot of it because of collecting film.
It’s a strange kind of loss when somebody closes your parts store: Nobody understands! I say to my wife “What am I supposed to do if I need an op-amp or a transistor?” She says “……what?”
(Full disclosure: I don’t understand her stuff either! “Exfoliant? Don’t you need your ‘foliants’?”)
There’s a bigger meaning here too. A big part of what’s up here is a decline of hobbies in general. There was a time when people built things in their spare time just for the satisfaction. That guy drilling your molar went to dental school (You certainly hope he did…), but when he got home he be might be building a model ship after dinner (Dentists have the best small tools!). Your accountant might be halfway through a Heathkit ham radio: in a year he’d have his antenna on the roof and be talking to somebody else’s accountant an ocean away. People had dark rooms and wood shops, sewing machines and engine hoists: all for the joy of it.
This is healthy stuff: something that you can accomplish that comes with the burst of endorphins we all need when things go right, yet without the deadlines and the stress the same things would have if they became jobs. (Why I stopped doing electronics at home for twenty years…)
Hobbies aren’t dead: there are still basements with trains in them. Oils are still being applied to canvasses in parks. I even know a couple of people running little movie theaters in their homes.
-They just aren’t as big as they once were.
It's as if we are leading such a fast paced, 24 hour a day lifestyle It’s really hard for somebody to slow down and take the time to carve a wooden bird or learn to make stained glass.
-to me that’s a shame!
P.S. Don’t be too concerned about me getting my wires, switches , resistors, plugs, jacks and more exotic stuff…there’s still internet!
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted March 09, 2015 12:13 PM
I miss them too. I used to hang out in the store all the time when I was growing up, (I've ALWAYS been a tech geek, so to speak, understanding little, but admiring it, just the same).
It's kind of like what is happening with Sears and Montgomery Ward. That used to be the neat thing, ordering something especially for you from a catalog from all over the world.
Now you can do it with a click of the mouse over the internet.
Sigh, I just miss those earlier ... simpler days.
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted March 10, 2015 07:01 AM
Just look around. Everywhere you go today, restaurants, movie theaters, shopping malls, airlines, ships, everybody are slaves to their smart phones. They are literally addicted to these devices to the extent that there is no space for anything else, such as hobbies, in their lives.
As Grahame says, the whole world has gone crazy.
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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar
Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted March 10, 2015 08:07 AM
The thing I see that young people are doing is that they still do creative things, but they do it within the boundaries of software. This is constrained creativity: they can't ever exceed the original intent of the software designers.
Even Lego comes with instructions these days!
Following a set of instructions is a critical skill, but the world also needs people that can think outside the box: create things that started between their own two ears and maybe think of ways of doing things that didn't exist before they showed up.
The world also needs people that can do something, fail miserably at it, learn from their mistakes and fix them, and be wiser next time. That's how progress is made.
That kid down the street that put a radio controlled plane through your picture window isn't just building model planes, but developing a mind capable of causing, and then solving problems.
It's better than the kid who builds the thing on a screen that can't self detonate, who is never stuck to take it apart and figure out what went wrong.
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Trevor Adams
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 763
From: Auckland,New Zealand
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted March 10, 2015 02:43 PM
We used to buy our "xmas hamper" from Sears-even when we lived on Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf.Example-A big box containing,a Daisy model 300 BB rifle,a toy sewing machine,a whole farmyard built into a suitcase,a new set of cutlery and a candy floss machine!!! Great catalogs,great days.Think I was always a mail order devotee-evidenced by my Cineflash and DUX toy projectors from the 1940s...........At one time,Johnson Smith would mail a Keystone hand-crank projector,in it's steel case,to New Zealand-no postal cost!Of course it took 3 months to get here on some tramp steamer! ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Trevor
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Graham Ritchie
Film God
Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted March 10, 2015 05:31 PM
I remember a small electrical business that was once across the road from the cinema, that guy could fix anything TVs, computer , stereos.... anything. However in todays world, so much stuff does not get repaired "its not worth it" but rather replaced. So where does that leave that skilled tech guy, who is trying to make a living out of it? Once upon a time his skills were highly sought after but not anymore....sad really.
In the end he could not afford the rent as his margin to make a profit was declining...so he closed. The same goes for a camera shop in the paper today, that after 36 years in the business is also closing, as most folk now take photos on the phones then onto there computer etc. So that seems to be another type of business that's in decline.
I agree with Paul, people are addicted to all this stuff, you do see it everywhere.
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