Radio Row photos

[KA3EKH]

Looks like I am just a angry young (Old) man. Its always about being at the right place at the right time, just like back in the eighties at the old Gaithersburg Ham Fest the year someone was selling a truck load of military KWM-2A transceivers for $200 each or times at Dayton when someone just opens up and is selling at a great price and all the usual Hacks that hound you when your setting up to sell and try to get stuff cheap are elsewhere. Always somehow get the most bargains at fest, but did score a 75A4 for $75.00 back around 79 at a Ham Radio store being nobody wanted that sort of stuff back then.
Its just that I remember being told all the stories of how great the stores up in NYC were and the couple times I was up in the city the reality never matched the hype, but as you say I must have missed the boat.

[K1JJ]

Wouldn’t it be cool to picture yourself driving in midtown Manhattan on your way down to “Arrow” for some 40’s ham gear?

Maybe you can:

https://youtu.be/yHe_d2hUVnA

Very cool video, Jeff!  Amazing sample of what it was like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHe_d2hUVnA

At  1:56 see the policeman standing on the white line in the center of the busy street. Cars keep crossing over the line like drunks. These guys were erratic drivers back then.  Question:  How could that cop possibly stand there for hours at a time and not get hit?  He doesn't even have on any florescent orange clothing.


Here is a video taken from the streets of Bangladesh.   There are about 300 pedestrians, bicycle riders and motorbike riders hit and injured by vehicles every day in Bangladesh. The hospitals are filled with them.   People sure put little value on what will happen to your life style after getting rammed by a 3000 pound death trap driven by a human.  (Plug for Tesla auto-drive)


Wanna see a real demolition derby?   How fortunate we are here in the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnYsa_c4GxU

T

[Sam KS2AM]

Wouldn’t it be cool to picture yourself driving in midtown Manhattan on your way down to “Arrow” for some 40’s ham gear?

Maybe you can:

https://youtu.be/yHe_d2hUVnA

Very cool video, Jeff!  Amazing sample of what it was like.

The person or people that make these videos do a great job sharpening and stabilizing the image but I could do without the fake colorization and audio.  After you've seen a couple of these the colors just look bizarre and the audio is predictable, "hey, there goes a horse <clippety-clop> <clippety-clop>" , "hey, look out for that car <honk> <honk>"  .

The original is here https://archive.org/details/IA35000011001_201710

There's another jazzed up one here from 1911 that's very cool and the closest we'll ever get to time travel I suppose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ1OgQL9_Cw

[Pete, WA2CWA]

In and around Bayonne, NJ and Jersey City, NJ there were several military storage warehouses and armories in the 50's and early 60's.

When I was a Junior/Senior(?) in high school, our Physics instructor was invited to attend an open house, "free-take what you want" at one of these places. He gathered up several of us, rented a panel truck (definitely wasn't big enough) and off we went  for a day of grab, drag, and stuff in the truck. The place was jammed with pickers from many schools. I remember on one table there were several large cartons full of rotary switches. People were sort of picking handfuls of switches. I muscled my way to the table, lifted one of the boxes full of switches with both arms and walked off to the staging area where each school's stuff was being gathered.

So it went from roughly 9AM to roughly 3 in the afternoon.
We loaded the panel truck with several rack panels full of equipment, some radar piece of equipment (less the antenna), bunch of test equipment, some non-descriptive pieces of equipment, and numerous cartons full of brand new parts.

We actually had trouble getting everyone back in the panel truck. I believe at least two of them had to sit on the equipment. I remember my instructor saying that he was told that there was a lot of under the table movement of stuff from these places to stores in Radio Row which was a NO-NO. That's why they started the free offers to schools.

Don't know what happened to all of that stuff after I graduated. Haven't been back to the building since then.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

I shopped and wandered Radio Row and Hamvention. Both places had their unusual smells, unusual vendors, and even stranger wandering shoppers. Personally, today, I don't miss either place.

[KC2ZFA]

early August '77 I went looking for Radio Row, I was thirteen and nobody had told me the WTC had wiped it out. I found a store and bought parts for the xmtr on page 172 of the 1975 ARRL handbook given to me the year before by the radio op on my dad's ship.

A week or so later Elvis died and it took me some time to recover from that loss.

[WA2SQQ]

I’m just returning from Orlando, and decided this trip to visit Skycraft Surplus. Its two blocks off of I4 in Orlando. It’s not Radio Row, but I was amazed at how much they have to offer. Items are sorted aisle by aisle, with tens of thousands of parts, and items to choose from. The aisle with meters had probably two hundred different styles and sizes. A huge wire and cable area and just about anything you could want. I went in with a large shopping list and got everything I was looking for.Prices we’re very reasonable. Spoke to the owner who told me that their web site only has a small portion of what he’s has in inventory.E mail them and they will get back to you. I may have found my new one stop shopping source.

[Sam KS2AM]

Nice radio broadcast about the history of Radio Row with 1960s interviews with the original owners including Blan ( you know, the Radio Man ).

Some real old-time New York accents here.

https://knickerbockervillage.blogspot.com/2007/12/radio-row.html