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This is Radio Shack #3169 at the corner of Harbor and Adams in Costa Mesa, California. I was the manager of this store in 1983-84, and now it’s closing down for good, along with the rest of the Radio Shack chain.

I hated it when people knocked after hours—it was always for some $1.39 kind of item—but I knocked anyway last night. The current manager is a guy named Carlos, and after I told him who I was he let me in and we swapped war stories for a while. I took his picture with his cell phone, then took one with my camera. We finished up, shook hands, and then he got back to replacing the “60% Off” banners with “80% Off” banners. It’s the end of an era.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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