In Memoriam: “You-do-it” Electronics

I moved to the Boston area thirteen years ago, and it didn’t take long for me to find You-do-it Electronics, with its anachronistic neon sign shining like a beacon to electronics nerds driving up I-95. This summer, it shut its doors for good, which leaves me sad, even though I knew its closing was inevitable from the first moment I walked in there.

I loved You-do-it for its narrow aisles filled with connectors, cables, wire, multimeters, soldering irons, rack hardware, and countless other components for any electronics project. When I built out an A/V and networking rack for my house, at least part of my motivation for the project was an excuse to shop at You-do-it. When Paperless Parts moved into its first office, that’s where I bought our networking equipment.

I suppose I only went there a handful of times. It was never crowded, but never empty. Despite my two electrical engineering degrees and wire-happy hobbies, I always suspected I was one of the least knowledgeable people walking the aisles. You-do-it was a place for people who knew how our electronic world worked. We were engineers, scientists, technicians, and historians. The store sat in the shadows of the antennas for all the major Boston-area television stations; I have to imagine over the years, components from You-do-it bailed out broadcasters more than a few times.

The store did what it could to keep up with the times. The product on the shelves never felt antiquated. Its closing feels like the end of an era, but it’s hard to pinpoint what era is ending. This isn’t a story about Amazon killing a brick-and-mortar retailer — when I needed things I could buy at You-do-it, I got in the car. And it’s not simply a story of technological obsolescence — home theaters and networks have thrived since Covid.

You-do-it represents a time when us nerds who understood the world of wires and radio waves could make and fix stuff that mattered with our own hands. We put antennas on roofs and subwoofers in trunks. We started businesses and invented the tangible. We fixed things and made stuff work. We were the people who got called by co-workers and friends and family when electrons were misbehaving.

Today, content is streamed, servers are in the cloud, and systems are on a chip. Technology is so powerful, tiny, cheap, and reliable that tinkering with hardware has lost its vitality. Our friends use soundbars and routers issued by the cable company. We nerds have evolved and thrived, but we’re nostalgic. When I think of what You-do-it meant, it was the thrill of a clever kid having just a bit more control of the nascent technologies that went on to reshape our world than the corporations that created them. Passing the vacant building today, I’m reminded of the Hunter S. Thompson quote: “With the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Twenty years ago, programming and electronics went hand in hand. Now I work with young, brilliant software engineers who aren’t particularly interested in computers. If it’s any consolation to those with some gray hair, it’s a cycle. Last time I checked, what seemed to make them tick were JavaScript frameworks, component libraries, and clever abstraction layers. AI has come for it all, and soon enough, they’ll be learning new tricks.

I guess there’s no rest for the curious.