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The slow death of Tottenham Court Rd

The electronics shops are ueseless. Poor choice and aggressive, rip off staff. I think the last thing I bought there was a Discman in the 80s. The other end with its furniture stores, PC World and Mortimer Market clap clinic has been more useful for me over the years, though shame there is no Reject Store anymore.
 
I think the decline started when they started to kick out the sex shops in the 90's and clean it up. I suspect they had a bit of a symbiotic relationship with the electrical stores and of course the 'nicer' TCR resulted in higher rents which timed nicely with the advent of internet shopping to kill off the electrical shops.

What I used to love was that they'd have loads of great stuff you wouldn't see in argos. Spy gear and imported stereos. Same goes for the computer fair. Now that's all available on ebay direct from China there seems little point.

The electrical stores that survived seem to mainly do commodity laptops now.

Ah well life moves on and all that.
 
It used to be the electronics capital of London and now there's loads of empty shops and bland High St stores taking their place.

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http://www.urban75.org/blog/the-dec...rt-road-former-electronics-capital-of-london/
The electrical stores were/are all owned by the same bloke. No real competition there at all.
 
Never been a massive fan of TCR. Over priced electrical shops, seedy looking sex shops iirc and the scien fucking tologists.
 
Never been a massive fan of TCR. Over priced electrical shops, seedy looking sex shops iirc and the scien fucking tologists.
I've never been pestered by a scientologist, what's wrong with me? :D
 
Greebo said:
I've never been pestered by a scientologist, what's wrong with me? :D

Their mere presence is malignant without any pestering. The only time I've had any contact with them i volunteered myself after a couple of bevvies. :D
 
What sex shops? :confused:

That's why I said iirc. I have this vague memory of there being one or two porn shops there in the late 90s. When I hadn't been in London that long. Charing Cross road does so it isnt beyond the realm of possibility.
 
this is one of the reasons why it's dying: https://www.facebook.com/curryspcworld/posts/470998072920101?comment_id=5634232&notif_t=like
please feel free to add comments!
That some customers are too stupid to be allowed to dress themselves in the morning, let alone own a computer ? WTF didn't he look at the display model ?

Those shift keys are pretty rank, but lappie manufacturers seem to have their own ideas on how to cram a keyboard into limited space and they have come up with some crackpot layouts over the years.

PC world are often in need of a good kicking, but this doesn't seem like one of them.

Caveat emptor


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If most people who buy pcs are anything like me they'll be too busy seeing what component specs they can be factored into their budget to be checking if a shift key is on the keyboard or not. I'd have thought the shift key was a given.
 
There IS a shift key (if I've identified the laptop correctly), ffs there's three of the buggers (albeit spectacularly crap ones)
 
Radar said:
There IS a shift key (if I've identified the laptop correctly), ffs there's three of the buggers (albeit spectacularly crap ones)

I mean its location should be standard. Why should people be expected to learn to type all over again?
 
I mean its location should be standard. Why should people be expected to learn to type all over again?

I said:
Those shift keys are pretty rank, but lappie manufacturers seem to have their own ideas on how to cram a keyboard into limited space and they have come up with some crackpot layouts over the years.

It's what laptop manufacturers do unfortunately.
 
there's a couple of nice occult bookshops near tottenham court road, atlantis book on museum street, treadwell's on store street, watkin's just near trafalgar square... why buy electronics when you can learn to conjure them up?

Watkins is Cecil Court.

Glad to see that you didn't mention the execrable "Mysteries". :D
 
I think the last time I went to TCR for anything more than "Crap! I need this cable and I need it now!" was back in 2004. That was when LCD screens still occasionally came with stuck pixels and "up to 3" was considered acceptable under warranty. I wanted to see the damned thing plugged in and displaying before I bought it. Didn't pay too bad a price (Samsung 193T) and it was recently donated on the Urban recycle forum.
 
What I used to love was that they'd have loads of great stuff you wouldn't see in argos. Spy gear and imported stereos. Same goes for the computer fair. Now that's all available on ebay direct from China there seems little point.
They had/have proper buyers with specialist knowledge of their area. These days it's all there on tech blogs or even tv but in the days when getting a full round up of new kit meant buying a handful of specialist mags, TCR was (and to some extent still is) the best place to go looking. Particularly for things that are new enough, or niche enough, that they're not widely reviewed.

Its heyday was quite short though, it only really came into its own when the Edgeware Road declined as the London electronics center, sometime in the 80s. Henrys is still there (I think) but not much else. If HiFi Care had held on to it's original shop, staff and ethos it too could perhaps survive for decades when all around turn into fried chicken shops. But no, they had to turn it into something hideous with overpriced blisterpacks and high staff turnover without the specialist knowledge, making it utterly useless.
 
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