Six Degrees of The Ancient Gaming Noob – Goodbye Fry’s

This is an installment of my Six Degrees series (which I haven’t touched in quite a while), in which I take a look at the wonderful blogs that surround Beyond Tannhauser Gate. The blogosphere is large, but there are so many friends to be found within Six Degrees.

Wilhelm Arcturus published a very nice piece on the demise of Fry’s Electronics over at The Ancient Gaming Noob this week, and I had to throw down my 2 cents on the chain of stores that helped me build many PCs over the years.

As Wilhelm pointed out, Fry’s was the go-to place for computer chips and pretty much anything related to building a PC, fixing a PC, or playing on a PC. Over the years, I bought CPUs, DVDs, video games, and video cards from them. They were the place to buy RAM and motherboards, and I’m pretty sure I purchased my first Pentium and AMD CPUs and my blazing fast Cheetah hard drives there.

But sadly, I don’t think I’ve been there since 2019. Before Covid shut me down like a hermit, I had stopped building PCs (it’s costly, and I was always chasing the latest and greatest) and pretty much stopped visiting Fry’s. They also started working on some weird consignment thing where there was never any stock in the store. I’d go to find a part I needed only to see shelve upon shelve of emptiness, and the part I needed had a spot on one of those shelves but was nowhere to be found.

The world has changed in the last 10–15 years. I do everything online these days…buy computers and computer parts, digitally download games, stream movies and music…there’s not too many things I need to go to a brick-n-mortar store for anymore. So while I’m sad to see an institution like Fry’s go, it’ll simply take its place among the icons – right next to CompUSA, Radio Shack, Circuit City, and Incredible Universe.

Online shopping and Covid have taken another victim, but I’m pretty sure this one was on it’s deathbed before 2020 even began. Sadly, if Wilhelm had not published his post, I probably would not have heard about Fry’s demise.

Six Degrees #38 | Six Degrees of The Ancient Gaming Noob – Goodbye Fry’s