🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 28 Jun 2018, Mike Spencer wrote:

>
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 2018-06-27, Rob Morley <nos...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 27 Jun 2018 21:11:20 GMT
>>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> We have lots of gadgets, just not enough of the right ones.
>>>> Where's my jet pack?
>>>
>>> Here's your bicycle with electronic gear shifting.  :-)
>>
>> Help!  I'm stuck at an intersection and I can't get it out of
>> 10th gear until it manages to find a wifi hotspot and download
>> the latest update.
>
>
> Hee hee hee...giggle.  Just so.
>
> And as all that stuff is proliferating, the analog stuff is quietly
> going away.  I need some parts for my rototiller engine.  It's only 46
> years old but the company that made the engine, a major economic
> pillar of its community in its day, is so long out of business that
> the factory building has been made into a community historic site. And
> the tiller company has been sold, borged, merged and sold again, has
> no interest in supporting old products.
>
> It's getting to be commonplace that when I go to the hardware store,
> nobody under 50 has even heard of the thing I want to buy.  The old
> guys may remember seeing the product but not for mumble years.
> Waterglass?  Cheap fireproof stickum handy if you do stuff with open
> flames.  Never heard of it.  Is there an app for that? :-\
>
There used to be small stores that had been around "forever" and still run 
by the original owner, or a descendant.  There was no liability to keeping 
the old stuff around, so you could go there, someone would know about the 
old stuff, and it was still around.

But a lot of those places are now closed, the owner dying or the rent 
getting too high, and no small  stores taking over the territory, just 
those big box stores.  But also there was that US ruling where old stock 
couldn't be written off, so keeping the old stuff wasn't just a matter of 
having a big enough basement.

All the local electronic parts stores that I went to as a kid starting in 
1971 are gone.  They had old stuff because they'd been around that long. 
But the area where a bunch of them were has long been redeveloped, sort of 
the same situation as "Radio Row" in New York City.  But also changing 
needs made those old stores less viable, fewer people wanting tube era 
parts, while the stores never fully adapted to solid state parts.

There is one exception, though when I went there a few years ago, it had 
totally been remade and while maybe the parts are behind the counter, on 
view was a lot of consumer equipment and accessories.  It used to be an 
"electronic supermarket", grab a basket at the door and go down the rows 
taking the parts from the bins as you needed.  A lot of surplus too, not 
military but consumer.

There used to be a guy who called himself "Mr. Fixit" and they dealt with 
the repair of old stuff (oddly, not just appliances and electronics but 
furniture and other things), but even they moved out of that field.  For a 
while there were places that stayed in their field, but it was like a 
consolitation, you'd have to go across town to get to them and everyone 
knew about them, but even those remaining places are mostly faded.

Every so often I read about people finding such stores, they'd closed down 
but the owner had kept things intact, paying the rent  (or maybe owning) 
the property) until he dies and it's a goldmine of old stuff.  So in the 
antique radio hobby, people find places like that and come home loaded 
when the stuff is finally cleared out.  Or someoen finds a stock of old 
toys because they were left in the back of some old store now being 
cleared out.

   Michael