Hail Satan!
The amazing thing about Radio Shack was how many stores they had; thousands, many in smaller towns.
I think that while there is a definite lean towards female business in the two “Big Box” hobby stores (Hobby Lobby and Michaels) I think part of it (especially HL) is that they’ve always promoted themselves as a safe, traditional (by their definitions) place to shop. Which grows the segment that shop there as smaller, more specialized places are eaten up - they have a self-reinforcing semi-captive audience that have been convinced that it’s the only/best option.
For my wife, who is/was a dedicated sewer, making her own garb for SCA and other dressy events, first went the local fabric stores, then the big retail one of Jo Ann fabrics, and now if she wants fabric, well, she won’t walk into hobby lobby because of it’s purported values. I do love her.
While some may quibble between the definition of hobby vs utility vs craft, that’s IMHO going to come down to personal opinions. But here’s one that is almost certainly going to be considered a “hobby” - card collecting. Again, this is/was my wife’s thing, oh, not sports cards, but short/small run limited editions for movies, TV shows, and to a lesser extent , CCGs (Collectible Card Games for those who don’t know).
And at one point, we had 3 or 4 stores that did all of the above. Last time I checked, there was just one, because it had all moved to Ebay or specialty sites where you could try to get just that ONE damn card you needed to complete your collection. For that matter, a lot of producers of such sets now just sell you a complete set, without any packs to open in the first place (MST3k being the most recent one for my wife in this example).
Anyway, I mostly wanted to point to collecting sports cards as a traditionally male hobby, that wasn’t bigger, heavier, and dirtier that had equally been eaten into by the ease that is the internet, and one that isn’t really showing up outside a very small selection (say at Target) in various Big Box Retail places either.
One thing that is long gone near me is Tandy Leather. JoAnn’s Fabric and Hobby Lobby have a tiny bit of leatherworking supplies, but not much. Cosplayers, SCAdians, and even the nearby Amish harness shop all have to make a day trip to the big leather store in St Louis.
There is no way I could have pursued my hobby of pinball machine restoration in the days before the Internet. Honestly, I don’t even know what purpose those coils serve outside of pinball machines.
One factor to consider that “women’s crafts” of making clothes and decorative items is often things to give as gifts or sell, while “men’s crafts” maybe more likely to be things made for themselves–how often do you hear “I’ve knitted you a sweater for Christmas” vs “I’ve built you a 1/24 scale P-51 Mustang for Christmas”? You would maybe expect .ore inertia behind keeping on gifting/selling than on keeping on building knicknacks to look at yourself, cool as the knicknacks may be.
I don’t want to hijack a thread that’s specifically about shops for what can be called, for lack of a better term, traditionally “male” hobbies, but I think that for the “female” version, there’s two (okay, three) things going on:
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Yes, in recent decades big-box stores have eaten up a lot of small retailers in the field of textile arts, as well as in most other fields.
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At present, though, there’s quite a surge in “female”-type crafting activities, and many newer small retailers are definitely benefiting from it. Ask any knitter or quilter what “LYS” or “LQS”, respectively, stands for, and they’ll be able to tell you.*
Sure, crafts like knitting and sewing still have nowhere near the ubiquity that they did back in the 1940s and '50s, say. But compared to what things were like in the '80s and '90s, they’re growing by leaps and bounds, ISTM. More people are home-sewing garments. More people are knitting and crocheting. More people are quilting.
- Of course, internet shopping. That’s the main factor AFAICT in the decrease of all small local craft retailers from, say, year-2000 levels, and it’s no different for textile-arts retailers.
The small shops that are surviving or growing tend to be the ones that offer not just retail goods but also community space for crafters, including technique classes and group projects and what-not.
(*) “Local Yarn Shop” and “Local Quilting Shop”.
Growing up in Chicago in the 60s I remember going into hobby shops that carried all kinds of plastic model kits, remote-control cars and planes, and construction materials like balsa wood and paints. I could have spent a small fortune there.
A decade or two ago, there was a small independent toy and hobby shop near me. Toys, baby strollers, bicycles, and lots of hobby stuff, like RC planes and those little die cast models of trucks, planes and so forth. (Not the cheap Hot Wheels/Matchbox stuff, but larger, higher-quality and more expensive European brands.)
Actually, I should amend my statement, because there is a new quilt shop that’s sprung up around here. I don’t know too much about it, though, beyond having called my mom to let her know when I saw it.
When I go to my local HobbyTown or even HobbyLobby, I don’t see many young people purchasing more traditional military models like tanks, fighters, bombers, or even automobiles. The younger people tend to pick up Gundam or other anime based models. (Gundam is a Japense anime series centering around piloted planes that transform into robots.)
Models kind of remind me of comic books. As a wee lad, I could find comic books at convenience stores like 7-11, at the mall in booksellers like B. Dalton or Waldenbooks, and even the supermarket. At some point in the 1990s, the only place I could find a comic book was at a speciality store that sold comics. Models are kind of the same way. As a wee lad, I could find models at K-Mart, the P/X, Kaybee Toy Store, etc., etc. but now you only find them as a specialty store.
Then there’s the prices. Not just of the models themselves, those can be expensive enough, but everything you need including tools, paints, brushes, etc., etc. Just breaking into the hobby is kind of expensive.
If you miss radio shack, check out guitar center.
No, it’s not the same thing. But there’s a very similar vibe, and the merchandise overlaps more than is obvious from the names.
The more I read these threads and talk to hobbyists (my 20-40 year old friends prefer the term “makers”), the more I’m willing to lump everything in together.
And join y’all in rejoicing that, in the midst of a decline in the hobbies of my childhood, there are still People Makin’ Stuff.
Whether that’s my Gen-Z neighbor making detailed medieval garb with leather, fabric and metal, or a retired friend welding artsy metal gates, or a youngster customizing a car.
(A whippersnapper bought my vintage beater, saying "Hey, the more that’s falling apart on it the better, because wrenching is my therapy.")
There’s a couple hobby places of that type around here but I only sometimes go to one. They specialize in serious RC cars but also sell various model kits, some RC planes, and various other hobby things. I mostly go there for the brand of super glue and accelerant they carry and sometimes paint as not many places carry Vallejo and they’re the only one I know of with Tamiya. Gaming shops are much more common and most carry a variety of tabletop wargaming, Pokemon, and Magic if not much else.
I suspect (but don’t know) that some of the people who might have gotten into trains, RC, model kits, Gunpla, and similar are instead into tabletop wargaming. There are a heck of a lot more options out there and it’s definitely more interactive overall than building a static display.
I’d say that video games are cheaper than a lot of other hobbies like RC cars/planes, scale railroads, model building, etc.
We have a store here that has an RC track adjacent to it and does RC stuff (obviously), rockets, various models, HO scale railroads, military miniatures/diorama stuff (non-wargame, more “build the Battle of the Somme in 1/32 scale”) and also carries some RPG books, board games and CCG cards. The main focus is really on the hobby stuff with the games taking a small aisle, or two if you count the paints (which are also used for other stuff).
The only person I know who does “traditional” hobbies does model building and even those are Gundam robots instead of cars, planes or tanks.
I blame 3D printers.
On thinking about it some more… What purpose does the shop serve? It used to be, in a lot of cases, the purpose was “This is where you buy the stuff you need for your niche interest”. But niche shops are precisely what the Internet is well-suited for. Any place whose primary purpose was selling stuff is now online. But in other cases, the shop’s purpose is “This is where the people who do things get together to do that thing”, and that can’t go online. Those places are still around and successful, and in some cases, doing better than ever. For instance, the whole concept of a “makerspace”: Yes, they’re largely associated in the public mind with 3D printers, and those are a relatively new innovation… but any decent makerspace will have all sorts of other tools, as well, many of which our grandparents used. Back in the day, were there shops where some random member of the public could come in to do a bit of welding, or machining, or use a bandsaw for a few pieces, or a sewing machine?
Stores dedicated to woodworking are still around. While it’s not exclusively a man’s hobby, I’m guessing the vast majority are men. Of all the woodworking classes I took, there was only one woman in attendance. There were at least two of those stores in Portland and I spent a goodly amount of money in them. A quick online check shows that there are a number of them here in MSP, including a couple of Rockler stores.
While 3D printers are certainly going to be, or currently are, a disruptive force, the decline in hobby shops happened long before printers became accessible to most people.
I think that’s one reason why the FLGS (“friendly local game store”) is still doing well in many places. You can certainly buy D&D books, or Magic cards, or Warhammer minis online, and some people certainly only play those games at home, with their friends. But, a lot of people don’t have friends who play, or they want to play in organized tournaments, and many game stores have space specifically dedicated for playing, and host organized play events.