This is somewhat tragic, because you can actually buy a wide variety of electronics components at RS which you can't get locally anywhere else. Sure, the internet is better in many ways, but it is a loss.
The real loss is radio shack extended distribution of these into settings like smalltown strip malls.
I live in an area that can be characterized as a giant suburb of 1 million+ people with no big city around it. There's one store in the industrial park with components and they've been around for decades, altho their ownership has changed hands a couple of times.
Real cities should have it better - I remember being in minneapolis and needing some bits for work and finding in the yellow pages a giant electronics store a few blocks from my worksite (downtown somewhere.) I was in a pinch in Cincinnati too and also found a local supplier.
These kinds of businesses are generally counter service, not self service retail.
A lot of people whine about paying $2 for five resistors because the same $2 gets you 200 at mouser. But you'll pay at least $5 for shipping and have to wait.
This comes up every time a Radio Shack article is posted, and the consensus has been that even Radio Shack isn't a reliable supplier of electronic components anymore.
It's just a different era. If you have 3 days, you buy that stuff online. If you're mid project and need something "today" Radioshack is often the best or only bet. It's like they have to have a huge inventory for the 10 people that care though.
Worse, they haven't found that niche to pay the bills.
Do you happen to live near that one radioshack in san francisco that is actually well stocked? None of the others are. Most of the time you're better off going to a Fry's to find electronics components.
Have you ever lived outside Silicon Valley and looked for electronic parts? If you're in a small town in most places in the US, RadioShack is quite possibly the ONLY place you will be able to find a resistor, potentiometer, or even a fuse or soldering equipment half the time. The other places you may have luck are WalMart or Sears.
In a few small towns I've spent a lot of time in, there's joint Ace Hardware-Radio shack stores which are pretty useful.
It ain't no Fry's (and even Fry's is pretty crappy compared to dedicated component stores), but it's better than nothing.
