
I was recently contacted by a reporter who was writing a story on the history of Fry’s Electronics and asked about publishing a photo or two he found on my old Flickr account. I hadn’t looked through my Flickr account in ages, and clicking over there brought back a rush of mid-2000s memories.
During that time most of my work-days were occupied doing Systems Engineering gigs in the field for Macprofessionals or Apple Professional Services. It was not uncommon to run into a problem that called for a critical, uncommon, IT component to finish a job. Since many of my gigs involved server or storage migrations, an extra backup drive was a common need. Nowadays, you can walk into any Target, Walmart, or Best Buy and get a relatively cheap SSD or HDD. Back then this was far less common, and Fry’s and Micro Center filled a critical gap for me. It’s hard to describe exactly how it felt walking in to a great computer store in the 1990s and early 2000s. For me- I felt a contagious excitement, particularly when I was away from home and trying to problem-solve. Their inventory held unlimited potential- basically there was no need you had that couldn’t be fixed with what they had in stock.
Micro Center is still the only national chain I know of that I can walk into and find LC, SC, and ST terminated Fibre Optic cables in-stock and on a shelf at 8:30 at night on a random Tuesday. This saved me multiple times during SAN deployments where we came up a patch cable short, or in some cases, cables were damaged. While Fibre Channel had lots of strengths, most pro workflows can operate just fine over 10GB ethernet using far more robust twisted pair cabling. No surprise in 2024 our Micro Center still stocks Multi-Mode and Single-Mode Fibre, alongside Cat8 Ethernet, which can do 40GB Ethernet on throws up to 30M. When I started deploying Xsan 1.0, Fibre Optic cable was used with 2GBps transceivers, connecting to Xserve RAIDs with 180GB PATA drives. 😅
At any rate, this post is more about Fry’s, how special it was, and how it’s missed. After I transitioned out of my role at Macpros and had fewer pressing technical needs, I would still make a point to visit their stores if I was passing by one when traveling. I have a similar tradition with Micro Center now.
Every Fry’s had a theme to their store, and the Phoenix store had an “At the Movies” theme, with a prominent marquee sign, and a large matrix of TV’s to mimic a movie theatre screen. It seems quaint looking back at a flat gallery like this, but walking in with the high ceilings and rows upon rows of specialty parts; it felt like an amusement park for geeks.
But a big part of Fry’s charm laid in the variety of stock they had in the store. On the opposite corner from the Computer parts, they had appliances. As you can see in the gallery, the first three bargain bins when I walked in contained a foot-callous shaver, what was at the time a world record cheap price on HDMI cables in a retail store, and pepper spray in that order. It would go on like this for what felt like dozens of rows. Most of the locations had a cafe, many with fresh popped popcorn (even if they weren’t movie-theater themed). Each one had a huge Mac specialty section, where you could feel and inspect hundred of third party accessories. Our specialty Apple retail section at Macpros would have five to ten custom-fit laptop bags, Fry’s had over a hundred in stock. I still carry an InCase backpack I picked up at a Fry’s.
Anyways, support your local Micro Center and may your the Fibre-Optic link lights be ever in your favor. I know that Amazon has replaced the role as supplier for cheap, accessible tech in much of the US. Honestly, I don’t have the time to drive from Ann Arbor to Sterling Heights just for a cheap flash drive like I used to, but nothing will compare to the feeling of hitting up Fry’s or Micro Center back in the day. I’m not sure how well Prime Delivery would have worked for those types of gigs. I’d often leave Fry’s, grab a late dinner, and head back to the station to put whatever special parts I needed to use immediately. When you needed it now, there was no substitute.
Post-Script: Looking back at the metadata; I took this particular trip during the final game of the 2008 NBA Finals, as Boston was winning the title. I’m speculating, but if I had to guess, I’d bet I watched the first half, saw it was going to be a blowout, and headed over to avoid the end of the game. Thankfully, their Matrix TV was in terrible shape, and I was more concerned with documenting the quality of the screen than the outcome of the game.