The Hobby Stop in Rockhill, SC was an amazing place. I used to live about a half hour from there and would stop in an buy something about once every 6 months. They were an amazing RC Car shop which also had railroad, rocketry, airplane stuff etc., but no question, they were known for the RC Car stuff. I could never afford RC Cars, but would buy repair parts for my outdated junk and occasionally even run on their tracks (note there were 3 by the time they closed) on non-race times.
Here's the Facebook link:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Hobby-Store/Hobby-Stop-160811150611196/
To make this a long and drawn out post (not intentionally, but I guess its what I do), I had purchased some old, used up Bolink 2wd Asphalt 1/10 cars from a co-worker. I messed around with them in the cul-de-sac to figure out what did and what didn't work, made a list and headed to the Hobby Stop. I bought new batteries (Ni-cad, so probably 1996 time frame) and a few of the missing parts. I brought the cars with me so I could make sure things fit. After spending, maybe $50-100 on the various stuff I got, I started to leave. The guy at the counter said "Wait, you're not going to run those cars tonight?" and I said I might once I got home and he said to go on out to the oval track and make some laps. He handed me 2 'house' batteries that were charged and helped me replace the tires that were dry rotted foam. He remembered the guy who used to race them there from the body paint. I asked how much was it to run 15 minutes (came from a slot-car background where you rented the lanes) and he looked at me kind of funny and said you can run on the track whenever there's not a race.
I ran for a while and spent more time spinning and crashing into the outside wall on the high-banked oval than one should be proud of. He jokingly said that I should probably practice at home a bit more, but I should really come by and run the track for a while and then come to a race, as they added a class called 'classics' (or something like that) which used older technology, bodies etc., so people didn't have to always upgrade to the best thing on the market that day. I attended an event, but after seeing how intense the racing was, I bailed out completely. I wasn't going to crash people with my bad driving. . . they were amazing.
Anyway, when COVID hit, I (like everyone else) got back into some retired hobbies. One was backyard 4wd RC trucks I bought from Horizon Hobby after I moved. The NiMH batteries were junk and so I decided to go to Hobby Stop to buy some Lipo's and maybe bring the trucks to their real offroad track. I checked to see if they were open due to COVID and found that they had closed the year before. Why? People like me that bought online instead of in the shop.
Going back to the Facebook link: First, look at the background picture and see what a cool place it was. Second, know they modified the off-road track every few years adding different challenges/ensuring it was a great venue. They added a twisty/turney concrete course in the tri-oval track for flat track 4wd road-course racing. The big tri-oval was practically big enough to run racing karts, not just RC cars and the banking was crazy. Lastly, if you scroll through the posts skipping the first 4-6, you get to their closing statement and comments. Reading the comments they basically say that internet sales shut them down and it will do the same for a lot of other shops. They were in the business, ran a great store, held awesome events and that is their opinion, so it counts more than mine, for sure. Having said that, I think its practically common sense that the big box stores killed the brick and mortar shops (hardware, electronics etc.) and Amazon is doing the same to many big box stores (excepting items that aren't practical to ship).
Support your on-site vendor if you fly at a club. If not, they'll go away too. This shop was amazing and had awesome tracks you could run on. Those tracks are now gone forever. I wish I understood this earlier. I would have been fine with donating some cash for 100% profit every now and then to have the option of running those tracks from time to time. Instead, I bought my trucks online, saving a few bucks (probably $20-60 out of $500) and this cool place is now gone.
Sandy.
[edit: DoH!!! I completely forgot the thing that relates this to rocketry. . . When I was at the shop one time, looking at stuff, I saw a flier with the little cut paper tabs at the bottom saying something like: "Would you like to fly with a rocketry club, join us at ROCC, flying from Willaims Farm in Midland" and I tore the tag off. When I got home, I made the phone call and then climbed into the attic for the ragged box that I had to get out of my room where I grew up that said 'rocket junk.' That is my BAR story, started at an amazing RC Car LHS.]