It's official. Radio Shack is now gone. All those swell Radio Shacks we grew up with are now history. If you want to be nostalgic, here is a 1961 catalog you can browse through. I remember as a kid buying a transistor radio there. They were also a good place to find cables and I remember buying RCA to transistor plug converter cables there, which I still have.
Mostly I remember going to the Radio Shack in Paramus with my big brother to help him test tubes. My brother was the electrician of the family and I remember going with him with all the tubes from the radios and the television set in the house in a brown paper bag. At Radio Shack we would test the tubes, occasionally finding a bad one that needed replacing. I never remember them being out of any tube we needed.
Radio Shacks were inviting to a male teenager in a way most other stores weren't. The fluorescent lights were bright and the mostly young male crowd seemed intent and knowledgeable about radio, tape decks, ham decks and that sort of thing. Hobbyists now buy most of their gear online, but it will never be quite the same.
Editor's note: I also remember going to Leonard Radio on Route 4.
