It's sad to see them go. When I moved to the Bay area 20 years ago it was the place to go to see what was the coolest things in tech. I built my first PC from components that I got there, generally had a pretty good price. It was good talking with a lot of the store staff because they knew what they were talking about. They were generally younger kids who you knew were going to move into tech so it was fun chatting with them.
I went to the Palo Alto store about a year and a half ago and it was so empty it was depressing. I also stopped off at the San Jose store on Hamilton around the same time and there were more employees than customers, It was funny/tragic some older gentleman was walking his dog in the store and it took a s*. Someone almost walked on it and said I thought this place had gone to s* but I didn't think that they'd taken it this literally. I never went back again, it felt too painful.
I went to the Palo Alto store about a year and a half ago and it was so empty it was depressing. I also stopped off at the San Jose store on Hamilton around the same time and there were more employees than customers, It was funny/tragic some older gentleman was walking his dog in the store and it took a s*. Someone almost walked on it and said I thought this place had gone to s* but I didn't think that they'd taken it this literally. I never went back again, it felt too painful.