[Electronic M]

It would be nice to go to a brick and mortar and get 5 resistors or capacitors for much LESS than what 20-400 would cost me from an online vendor...Or order something not in the store and get it in store in a day with no shipping charges (like auto parts stores do).

There are plenty of times in a resto or setup of equipment that I discover I need something not on hand and feel like "I want this now", but usually end up waiting (sometimes months) till I have a $100 order to justify* $6 ~3day economy shipping of the online vendors...I can't picture spending $1K on parts to justify the price of overnight shipping.

*There is no way in hell I'm paying $3-6 to ship under $50 of parts (unless it is a VERY big emergency). If I did that once a week to once a month I'd waste a ton of $ on shipping charges.

What radio shack needs to come back is a new renaissance in Ham radio membership/home brewing. So much of modern electronics is turning/has turned into disposable software based crap that society has lost interest in understanding the hardware. In another 30 years if a once a century or two solar EMP hits and enough of our electronics are not shielded, I can see the world returning to the stone age as the computerized equipment that makes everything dies and no one can fix the tools of the electronics industry without those tools.