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Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

This store has changed a lot. A friend and I visited the Fry's on Lawrence Expressway back in the late 80's. Across the street from WeirdStuff.

I'd never seen anything like the selection of stuff. We bought several 256-bit memory modules and a six pack of soda. It carried the biggest and only selection of electronics components and equipment/supplies for assembly/testing I'd ever seen. It also had candy and sodas. That was about it.

A few years later I visited again and couldn't believe: (a) how big it had become; and (b) how many finished products it was selling.

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> A friend and I visited the Fry's on Lawrence Expressway back in the late 80's. Across the street from WeirdStuff.

Even better, there was Fry's and WeirdStuff on the west side of Lawrence, and nearby on the east side was a Computer Literacy Bookstore and a Togo's. Many a Saturday of mine was spent visiting that Fry's and WeirdStuff, then crossing Lawrence to pick up some books and magazines at Computer Literacy, then reading the magazines while enjoying a large hot #7 at Togo's.

I was at the first grand opening. I moved to TX in 90s, Fry's followed and took over the defunct Incredible Universe building a handful of years later, I was excited. When they started to sell appliances and As Seen on TV stuff, I knew it was the start of the downwatd spiral. While sad to see them go, it's been a frustrating number of years of having to correct their sales people on talking BS to customers and the deals they used to have on computer components have dried up many years ago. Maybe they will make a come back like Radio Shack, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I wonder if that was the same one I went to for the first time back in the 80's? I was kind of blown away by a store that both chips (potato) and chips (silicon).

The very first Fry's was at 541 Lakeside Drive in Sunnyvale, on the east side of Lawrence Expy. Sometime around late 1990 that store moved to 1177 Kern Ave in Sunnyvale, and then by the late '90s moved again to the current location at 1077 E. Arques.

The second store to open was in Fremont (though not at the Fremont store's current location), and the third was the Palo Alto (at the current location).

Source: I worked some summer jobs at the Lakeside Dr. store in the late '80s.

Wasn't the Lakeside store a converted Fry's grocery store?

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