Micro Center Nerd Store fills the vacuum of the Fry with its return to Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Nerds are lonely since Fry’s electronics was closed in February 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. The electronic store chain was an embodiment of the technical roots of the valley.

But MicrocentrumAn electronics retailer from Ohio has opened his 29th store in Santa Clara, California. And so the Nerd Kingdom has returned. I see this as a big problem, after the opening of the Nintendo store – the second in the country after New York – earlier this month in San Francisco. After years of poor economic news, it is nice to see signs that the Bay Area is coming back.

But this is not just a store. It is a symbol – a sign that shows that Tech is still physically present in Silicon Valley, next to places such as Buck restaurant, the Dennies where Nvidia started, the Intel Museum, the Computer History Museum, the California Academy of Sciences and the Tech Museum of Innovation. Other historic hangouts for techies such as Walker’s Wagon Wheel, Atari’s Headquarters, Lion & Compass – even Circuit City – have long been closed. But hey, we have the Micro Center shop and the Apple space ship is not that far away.

The Grand Opening Week went well and I was given a tour of Dan Ackerman’s Superstore, a Veteraanttech journalist who is editor-in-chief at Micro Center News. While I entered the place, Ackerman was completing a chat with IFIXIT, a technical repair publication that has its own space for podcasts in the store. That was unexpected, because I have never seen a store in such a way to embrace social media.

In the neighborhood was the knowledge bar, where you can answer all your technical questions – just like the brilliant bars in Apple shops. And there were repair tables in the open air.

There are many things for technical enthusiasts who can be fun on Micro Center. Firstly, it is not as vast as Fry’s, who had Zany themes such as ancient Egypt and a weird mix of electronics costs, as well as household appliances, cosmetics, magazines and tons of snacks. (The Egyptian theme Campbell, the California Fry store that I often drove, was 156,000 square feet, and now it is the home of a pickleball court complex). Fry’s was a store that stereotyped Nerds and Silicon Valley, who also had its own HBO television show that continued the stereotypes.

The Micro Center store, on the other hand, is smaller at 40,000 square feet and filled with many more practical nerd items. Before the big opening, this store had the very practical product of more than 4,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) in stock from Nvidia (who just launched his 50 -series GPUs) and AMD, Ackerman told me. Some of those graphic cards cost no less than $ 4,000.

“People were waiting to come to the GPUs,” said Ackerman.

To see was a gilded graphic card that was auctioned for a good cause. It was signed by Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia.

“I jokes that the one who wins the bid must also get a Jensen -learning jacket,” said Ackerman.

And this Micro Center store has a good location (5201 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Santa Clara), just a six-minute drive from the worldwide of Apple and (perhaps even better) walk one minute from the Korean hair salon.

Micro Center had a previous store in Silicon Valley, near Intel’s head office in Santa Clara. But that store was closed in 2012 because the company could not negotiate better conditions with the landlord. Before returning to the Bay Area, Micro Center forced its time and came back to a time when many other retail chains failed. It proves that the once proud region – the birthplace of electronics – still deserves its own electronics store.

Of course, we have Target, Best Buy and Walmart who sell a lot of electronics equipment. But there is nothing like the Akihabara Electronics District in Japan, which is full of several-storey electronics stores and gaming arcades.

But this store is loaded with the modern top acceleration of today, such as AI-PCs, omnipresence settings for houses and dyes for multi-colored water cooling systems. Sellers such as Razer and Logitech had their own sections. Ackerman was delighted to show me the USB-C to USB-A adapter in stock, under many obscure items. And he showed me the stock machine that could rotate the stock 3D print filaments and give you the exact SKU that you scanned with a barcode.

“That’s super fun. I call it the Lord Filaments,” Ackerman said about the inventory robot.

There is a section for hobbyists who love computer graves and do-it-yourself projects. There is a set of video, audio and digital tools for making content for content makers. All in all, there are more than 20,000 products and more than 100 technical experts who can help. It even has the numbered cashier locations where you can check out – the same kind of cash register that Fry’s had.

Customers can receive authorized computer service for brands such as Apple, Dell and HP, which benefit from diagnostics and repairs of the same day, thanks to more than 3000 parts at hand through partnerships with leading OEMs. I just wish it had a help desk for Comcast.

Micro Center started in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio. It is a surprise that there are no more nerd shops, considering how omnipresent technology is around the world nowadays.

But Ackerman said: “These guys are doing really well, picking and choosing, find the right cities, finding the right locations. That’s why Charlotte is great. Miami is a big technical hub, especially for health technology. And we are literally five minutes away from the Apple headquarters and many other places. HP and Nvidia and other companies come in today.”

“Although this store is large, the CEO (Richard Mershad) is really in curation, and ensures that this is the right mix of things. He ensures that it does not go too far away. So you don’t come in here and find, you know, hairdryers or lawn care equipment,” said Ackerman. “You are going to computer and house entertainment items and do it -find the self -equipment. There are components, just like in a radio cabin, that hobbyists care about.”

Regarding the news from Micro Center, Ackerman told me that he has around 10 regular contributors and 20 freelancers who write gadfetrations and other stories about technical equipment. It is a kind of refuge for that disappearing breed of professional technical journalists. No wonder I was so nostalgic that Micro Center visited.