I like these places too but I can see why they are dying. The number of SKUs people want has exploded and the cost competition from buying online is unreal. Recently I needed a motor driver in a hurry (a4988 or equivalent) and decided to visit my local electronics shop. They wanted $9 for it (plus tax), which I was willing to pay, but were out of stock. So I went home and found a 5 pack of the exact same part for about $10, shipped from the US.
The reality is that with these electronics things it's not just 20 or 30% cheaper to buy online, it's often 1/10 the price or better. I can order a 10 pack of pin headers for $1-2 from China and each of those headers costs 50c at my local shop.
This is a benefit of having ultra dense industry specific zones like the Shenzhen SEZ. Physical vendors get the volume to warrant operating and reasonable pricing, buyers get components on short notice.
Suburbanization set up the US for failure here, and the governments haven't bothered intentionally creating any equivalent of Shenzhen. Santa Clara county used to be the spot, and I'd regularly pick up quickturn PCBs in person. Still can, but if you're in SF you're probably going to wait for next day shipping unless it's super super important, in which case it could come from any domestic CM.
This doesn't really solve you problem, but they did just open (or about to) a Micro Center in Santa Clara.
Wasn't there already a Micro Center in the AMC Mercado Plaza, by that church on Great America?
Not for a long time now - closed in the mid 2000s I think.
May 30th, just a few more days!
Is it just about having dense industrial zones? I would have imagined cost of labor to be the major cause of price differences.
A lot of the cost of silicon valley labor comes down to extremely high housing prices. A lot has been made of how the tech boom was simply a wealth transfer from investors to bay area real estate + homeowners.
Sure but even if you exclude Silicon Valley, the minimum wage for a US worker must be a fair bit higher than the equivalent non-US worker.
The US used to have its own SZ in lower Manhattan. They were abandoned when Japan did things cheaper.
The public's (lack of) tolerance of pollution also impacted things. It's not like PCB manufacturing is clean.
PCB manufacturing isn't that bad, semiconductor fab is very nasty. It was nasty an unmitigated way during the birth of silicon valley, check out a superfund site map if you're bored.
https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?layers=c1229e...
I tried to go to AS&S a few times working on projects. They never had what I needed in-stock. It honestly feels more like a toy/knicknack store rather than a place where you can get things you need to build or repair things.