Some of my earliest memories are at a Radio Shack trying to convince my dad to buy me an RC car. Eventually we switched to Fry's (where I bought and built my first computer) but that died too... Now there's a big hole in the bay area and I am probably one of the last people to have that sort of childhood staple. Although, Microcenter might be a worthy replacement once it's done.
Last time I was in the bay area, I went to Central Computers, and it fills a lot of the niche that Microcenter offers elsewhere in the country. It's one of the few places I can find Raspberry Pis at MSRP (without the high shipping prices from online retailers), and it has enough worthwhile parts for you to build your own PC if you wanted, too.
Santa cruz Electronics (Bay Area adjacent) sells them as well as passive components and NTE chip replacements. I even went there a year ago to buy a passive SCSI terminator- the guy went in back and came back with a dust covered box marked SCSI $5/per and let me dig for what I needed.
I love Central Computers. We needed some weird cable to connect 2 very different devices and I grabbed a coworker to take along for the journey. He was highly skeptical that they'd have something as odd as we needed. They had an entire aisle section devoted to the genre with different lengths and colors.
When I need something unusual, and I need it right now, they're the first place I look. I try to throw more common business their way, too, because I want them to be open and available forever.
I have a Microcenter within biking distance. You are going to hate their prices versus what you can get the exact same product for online. Plus, still no individual electronics components. One of the biggest things I miss about Radio Shack was being able to go buy just the five capacitors I needed to repair something, all housed lovingly organized by value in those sliding drawers.
Yeah, although I am not doing much hardware stuff anymore, I'm thoroughly disappointed in the lack of component stores that just had stuff for makers.
My dad went to Sim Lim Square (in Singapore) back in the 90s and he wanted to take me back when we visited a few years ago. There was a bunch of gaming stuff and they got the 4090 early than the US so I was happy, but he was miffed and disappointed at the lack of components and cheap electronics.
