Michael I remember my first visit to the electronics discount store "Fry's Electronics" 24 years ago. We had just moved to California, the gold rush in Silicon Valley was in full swing, and anyone looking to buy computer components regularly hung around one of the many scattered Fry's branches to marvel at the incredible prices and even more incredible discounts. At Fry's I saw for the first time that a product was offered in a store at a negative price, a package of disks for $0.99, with a $1.99 mail-in rebate.

Each Fry's branch was decorated according to a certain theme; the store on Brokaw Road in San Jose was like a pyramid in the land of the Pharaohs, a monstrous UFO burst through the wall of the Burbank strip mall, and in the Palo Alto branch, cowboys and Indians of the Wild West showed what it was like in the 19th century in the area. Full-size concert grand pianos were scattered around the stores, automatically playing classical pieces. And not to forget the giant magazine stand, which carried the current "Linux Magazine", the vehicle of your humble writer's programming column. But most importantly, the chain was a huge success; shoppers crowded into the stores late into the night, loaded their newly purchased, state-of-the-art PC hardware into their cars, and a real geek scene flourished there.

These times are obviously long gone, the online giants have completely drained the presence of department stores in the last ten years. Strangely, Fry's stores still held on, even though there were hardly any customers and hardly any products in the shelves. Since Fry's was not listed on the stock exchange being a privately owned company, no one could look into the books and estimate how long the empire would last.

However, the store had always operated on the edge of legality, it was widely known that they would simply re-seal exchanged products in plastic wrap and sell them as new, which is illegal in California. I also saw increasingly disgruntled and desperate employees on my dwindling visits, so I would have bet good money for the past five years that the store would eventually close. Recently, some YouTubers even went out to visit scattered branches and pointed to the empty shelves making long faces.

Now it's official: Fry's has officially filed for bankruptcy in February 2021 and closed all of its stores. The battle is lost, but "It was good while it lasted", as we say here in America.

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