Google bought the Weird Stuff building. Their last day is tomorrow | Hacker News Reader

Google bought the Weird Stuff building. Their last day is tomorrow

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117 pointseyeareque26 comments

Going there always made me feel inspired, excited, and reinvigorated with creativity. Good for coders block. There is a thrill with holding an artifact and considering its previous use and a potential use. Or just the challenge of buying some vaguely non-functional vintage computer, learning about it, repairing it.

I've found software that I've worked on, things I'd lusted after from magazines, but couldn't have afforded at the time (ooh, a Telebit Trailblazer! A wide format plotter!) and just weird (16 gross cleanroom booties! queCats!). Once I found a box of floppies with the name of someone that I used to work with at another company. Things just wind up there.

Oh well, I guess its going to have to be more frequent visits to the foothill[1] flea market...[2]

[1] Not at Foothill[3] anymore - moved to DeAnza College.

[2] http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/?electronics=

[3] Big note on [2] that they're actually moving to the Fry's parking lot in Sunnyvale for the first one of the year (April 14, 2018)

note on [3]: This year’s first flea market was on March 10th, 2018 :)

That's symbolic. This marks the end of DIY garage entrepreneural days of the Silicon Valley. Now the corporate/careerist era has firmly settled in.

The garages are in China now.

The garages are too expensive now, as they’ve been converted into studio apartments.

There's still Fry's --which I don't know how they survive, given their inventory controls.

Weird stuff was good for cheap as-is used parts though.

I mean, there's still HSC.

http://www.halted.com/

It's not even that far from Weird Stuff, and unless you work at Yahoo probably a bit easier to get to (being right along central expressway). Growing up in the valley, HSC was my hacker shop and where my love of analog electronics flourished.

If anything, the loss of Weird Stuff (which I am sad about) implies that garage days aren't about soldering resistors to a breadboard anymore. Hardware hackers are few and far between these days.

Now? Personally I think it has been a long time since the "garage entrepreneur" days of SV.

I remember feeling like they were the Fry's version of Mike Quinn's Electronics.

I think that placed closed long ago, but was out in WWII era temporary buildings near the Oakland airport and had lots of really weird stuff. I remember seeing old test equipment that probably came from LBL and looked like it should be on a movie set with some Jacobs ladders...

Back when I lived down there I'd go out to Mike's like once a month (lived over in Alameda, short bike ride).

I miss places like that. The "makers" of today would love them.

Always could find something cool to rig up to something else cool and have a fun weekend project with the old man.

My favorite memory about weird stuff: I have a no name rack mount server case that was missing a key for the front lock. Unsurprisingly they had the exact same case and sold me a spare for cheap.

I always loved looking at all the old gear there, it brought back a lot of memories. Netopia, Netscreens, old Cisco routers, Sun servers.

Here's a blog post someone put up about the closing as well: https://rsts11.com/2018/04/06/weird-stuff-warehouse-is-closi...

Philadelphia had a similar high-tech junkyard back in the 1980's. I still have the 4K wire-wrapped magnetic core memory board I bought there for a few bucks. When backlit, the board is really quite beautiful.

Didn’t they have a commercial lease? Seems odd that they can just be kicked out because ownership of the building changed. Unless commercial leases work differently there than they do here (Australia)?

If the lease period has lapsed it would have become a rolling monthly lease. It’s quite common when landlords are interested in selling a property as it makes it easy to do exactly this. The leaseholder usually likes it as well as the rent will stay the same rather than go up.

They've known it for a while apparently [1]. The sign reads that as of Feb 16 2018 WeirdStuff is no longer accepting drop-offs, and they're closing April 8 2018. So the sign is at least 1,5 month old.

I wish I been there when I was in SFO in mid '00s. But I owned my fair share of UNIX nostalgia. The electricity company loved me very much.

[1] https://rsts11.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/2018-04-06-09-31-...

Really saddened by this news. I’ve spent $$$ and time there over the years and fondly remember the experience.

Does everyobe but me live in SO? This is weirdly specific.

End of an era. Not the same, but Halted's still around.

It's all eBay now. I went to Halted for years, and the stuff stopped turning over a decade or so back. What was left was stuff nobody wanted.

Wierd Stuff was where you went to get networking equipment from two generations back.

In the thread someone links to an item where they're saying Halted owners are trying to find a successor. They're attempting to retire.

What a special place, I was there a couple of weeks ago and I had a blast browsing around. I didn't know it was such an emblematic place!

Correction: their last day is tomorrow, April 8th.

Thanks, I updated the title.

Oh man, this place looks awesome. Sad I never made it out. Where will you all be going now that it’s closed?

I remember them in the 80’s/90’s: new and used computer parts and tons of shareware.

I’m going to miss this place.

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