One of the creepier tech-related incidents I remember was many years ago when I wanted the Sam's Photofacts (a third-party creator of device specs and schematics, etc.) for a very old portable TV. Way out of date, but I was trying to help someone with it.
I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for old Photofacts, but I did not say anything about the TV. He scribbled an address on a scrap of paper, an address locally here in L.A. "Try him," he muttered.
I drive over. It's a small unmarked storefront. I go in, the bell on the door rings. Sitting inside, like the caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland", is this little guy perched on a stool, with immense stacks of paper surrounding him everywhere. Total mayhem.
I walk up to him -- knowing that this was a waste of time and really wanting to get out of there -- and asked if he had the Sam's Photofacts for that specific very old TV model.
Without saying a word, he reached over to the pile of papers right next to him, took the TOP item off the pile, and silently handed it to me. It was the ancient one I needed. Stunned, I paid him the amount marked on the item, and left with it, not completely sure what had just happened.
When I drove by there a month later that storefront was something else entirely. He was gone.
@lauren circa 2005, A guy walks into our shop and asks for some common valves. We'd had them. Then he asks about some obscure valves for an old tv. I'd JUST done clearance for a retired TV repairer a few of days before and had one. He asks for other unusual old hifi bits, I had them. Jokingly, he says "If you've got the clutch for a 2004 Vauxhall Astra, I can go home!"
The boss leans behind the till, and puts the clutch on the counter. The look on the old guy's face was priceless.
@lauren it turned out the boss ordered it for his daughter's car and had it delivered to the shop, but he'd ordered the wrong one. It was the right one for the customer though!
@lauren
That door wouldn't have opened for anyone else, the bell wouldn't have rung and there wouldn't have been any paper in the room had anyone but you looked through that window. #WelcomeToNightVale
@lauren apropos of nothing, I miss opamp technical books here in LA and i'm sad I never got to Powells in portland before they closed the tech books site. I would like a haunted magical appearing one of those.
@lauren I ran into this same place except when I found. It I was looking for good Korean food in Nashville and it was a totally empty restaurant which served me the best bibimbap I’ve ever had and when I tried to go back the entire building had been demolished
@lauren
In the satirical fantasy Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett, the novel Soul Music mentions Wandering Shops or "tabernae vagantes". They have weird and unique wares, and when you go back they are gone.
I've been rereading the discworld books, and Wandering Shops actually show up in THE LIGHT FANTASTIC — book 2 (of 40+!), and indeed I thought of that story when I read this one.
(also I assume that's why so many SF/F writers seem to have congregated at https://wandering.shop/)
@trochee@nyrath@lauren Ah-ha! Thanks for putting that connection together! I'd idly wondered where they got the instance name but didn't ask or search.
@lauren I love this. It's right out of a Roger Zelazny short story. I have a bunch of old photo facts folders for turntables but I got them the mundane way by inheriting them from the dead.
@lauren
Oh man, running into those magic storefronts in real life is so surreal...
Have you ever been to a Fastenal store? And like, they always seem to have the part you need even if it's some weird obscure part from some Korean equipment you're working with? And they pop it into their database and just go where the computer tells them and, there it is, your non-standard bolt-connector that you should have had to wait two weeks to get imported from Korea?
@lauren I heard a rumor that the place to get a cheap #bike was from Dalebert the Bicycle Man. I was given an address not to a store, but a barn, but in an alley in the city. And Dalebert was waiting there with the barn door open.
The barn seemed to be bigger on the inside than the outside, like alien spacecraft technology.
I bought a pair of his and hers mint condition Panasonic touring bikes from the 80s. A friend bought this mixte.
@lauren Possibly he tells the story of the time he was going through a pile of old Photofacts and a customer came in and asked for the exact one he'd just put on top of the pile.
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