The Internet Is At Fault

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that I take full advantage of the Internet. However, on occasion, there are things that I've come to love that the ubiquitous use of Internet has/is killing off. 

Some years ago, there was an electronics parts supplier located on the east side of downtown Dallas which on a monthly basis would bring out their slow moving inventory onto their parking lot and have a clearance sale. Apparently, quite a lot of their patrons were "Ham Radio" enthusiasts and they too began to set up tables in, first their parking lot and it being on a Saturday (virtually all area offices being closed on Sat), make use of adjoining parking lots. At it's height, the whole thing had an appearance of some sort of "bazaar" in a middle-eastern country! 

At the, what became know as the "1st Saturday Sidewalk Sale/Flea Market", one could find pretty much anything related to electronics. By the time I discovered it back in the '90s, it had been taken over by computer folks. At that point; what with the proximity of Texas Instruments, EDS, Dell and other firms, lots of corporation offices, Dallas had become a bit of a "Silicon Prairie". In those days, the Internet was in it's infancy (if not adolescence), and the price of computing equipment was relatively high. My geek friends and I would come in from Lubbock (where I lived and worked at the time) about once a year and just wander around in a techo-drunk stupor. It was the most wonderful weekend trip I could think of! When we'd finally had enough or the East Texas heat got too much, we'd go over to Tandy Corps (think Radio Shack), new "super-store" concept, called "The Incredible Universe", were we'd spend the rest of the day in air conditioned techno-lust. 

Then came the 2000s. Incredible Universe was bought out by erstwhile grocer, Fry's and "broadband" became commonplace. In 2003/04, now married, I and moved from the High Plains to Dallas/North Texas. This was right around the time that 1st Saturday began it's slow and inexorable slide toward irrelevance. 

This last Saturday, I took some of my Computer Club students down there so they could get a sense of what "street prices" were really like, versus the fantasy world that is Wal-Buy, where most people purchase their equipment. Of course they was fascinate and somewhat astounded that such a thing exist, but to me, it just looked sad. What was once a sprawl across an entire section of downtown had first moved across it to an area under the Woodall Rodgers Freeway. Then about a year ago they moved closer to a landmark building called West End Market (Dallas Alley) where there is more general foot traffic and tourist . At each move, the number of vendors has gone down and now there seems to be about a 2 to 1 balance between computer vendors and general flea market sellers hawking deoderent. Of the technology oriented sellers, the bulk either deal in nothing but corporate surplus, or merely random junk. I'll have to admit that the vendor that I go to first is a guy that has probably 20 tables of any manner of old stuff. This last time, I found a Minolta Hi-Matic 7S II in pristine condition (with the exception of the name/ss number inscribed baseplate), which is commonly considered to be one of the very best of it's (compact 35mm camera) breed. One of my students wanted it badly, so I ended negotiating for it in a bundle of stuff. In the end, it cost about $10. And that's the draw and beauty of these sort of places, and why it's sad to see it slowly wither away.