I preferred Weird Stuff, but we still used Halted for same-day popcorn supplies we needed in 2013-2014. The day Weird Stuff closed was the day "old" Silicon Valley died for me.
Despite not being a surplus store, I would add Frys to the list of culturally relevant Silicon Valley electronics stores now lost to time. It was worth taking a day to visit all the SV locations to compare the hokey aesthetic choices (I was closest to the Wild West Palo Alto branch, but I think the Campbell Pyramid was my favorite).
Told all my Michigan friends when they visited the Bay area to be sure to visit Frys, Weird Stuff and Computer Literacy Bookstore.
Saddest about Fry's, when I worked for a hosting company we had a data center in Virginia. The boss would drive out there with servers from Michigan to rack and on the way back he'd go hundreds of miles out of his way just to stop at Fry's in Indianapolis.
I bumped into this ageing hippy (grey hair, cheesecloth shirt, pony tail, shorts and sandals), in Frys (East Brokaw Road) during one of my trips from the UK to the USA.
He was a really nice guy and wanted help choosing some kind of adapter for his mac laptop.
We got chatting about why I was in San Jose, Western Digital being in the old IBM buildings, what I did for work etc., and then he mentioned that he was one of the early day SV computer crew and hung out with other members of the The Homebrew Computer Club. He also said his brother played Spanish guitar at a restaurant in Mountain View and recommended the food!
He finished off with "...yeah, I knew Steve Jobs quite well - boy, he could be a dick at times!"
Despite not being a surplus store, I would add Frys to the list of culturally relevant Silicon Valley electronics stores now lost to time. It was worth taking a day to visit all the SV locations to compare the hokey aesthetic choices (I was closest to the Wild West Palo Alto branch, but I think the Campbell Pyramid was my favorite).