A Funeral for Tekserve, New York City's Most Iconic Computer Repair Shop

On Tuesday, Tekserve, New York City's most iconic and beloved computer repair shop, was bustling like the old days. Vintage Apple computers lined the walls, spare cords and connectors snaked everywhere, white-haired customers—who'd been getting their electronics repaired at the overly bright Chelsea institution since 1987—greeted the owner with a "hey, Dick" and a hug.

People often smile at funerals—it's nice to remember the good times. The truth of the matter is that in 2016, it's hard enough for an independently owned electronics repair shop to survive anywhere, let alone while taking up the first two stories of some of Manhattan's most prized real estate. Tekserve made a habit of displaying vintage radios, computers, vending machines, and art, simply because owner Dick Demenus liked to collect them, it gave the store personality, and hell, it had the space. At Tuesday's going-out-of-business auction, all of Demenus's old stuff found new owners.

"I've been collecting for decades—I have a lot of stuff and I love my things, but I'm not going to combine my collection at home with the things from my store," Demenus told me as an auctioneer sold off the red neon Apple sign that hung in the store's window (final price: $300). "I want to spread the wealth and I think people are enjoying these things—each one is a piece of history. I'm very pleased with today."

There was something cathartic about Demenus's everything-must-go mentality. Not only was the store selling its legendary "Mac Museum," which features 35 historical Apple computers (sold for $47,000), it also sold all of its price guns and display shelves, dozens of old radios, cameras, light fixtures, and old Apple advertisements. The store was even selling used trash cans for a buck a piece.

An old Watling "guess your weight" scale from the early 1900s caught my eye. Why did a computer repair shop have that around, anyway?

"If you think about it, it's a beautiful mechanical thing," Demenus said. "It's a beautiful design. Today, if you want a scale, it's a digital thing that'll last a couple years and you buy it now, get rid of it tomorrow. A thing like that was designed to last 100, 200 years. It's a different philosophy that we have today."

He makes a good point. Tekserve and stores like it are part of an older era of electronics. Lots of our cheap electronics break more often than older machines, but stores like Tekserve don't see a sales bump because of it. It's easier and often cheaper to just get a new computer than it is to repair one. Deb Travis, who has been a service manager at Tekserve since 1995, explained to me that manufacturers' insistence on making laptops impossible to upgrade has cut into a key portion of Tekserve's business: By not making RAM or hard drives replaceable, Apple and others have made it tough for Tekserve to survive.

"They know when they sell you a MacBook Air with 4 gigs of RAM, you're going to need a new one next year," Travis told me.

Meanwhile, other small repair shops have been hurt by manufacturers who refuse to sell replacement parts or repair guides to independent shops. Tekserve was grandfathered into Apple's Authorized Service Provider program, meaning Tekserve was able to source parts directly from Apple. Apple has not given a new certification since 2010, so other small shops must source parts of varying quality and legality directly from China. Apple has worked with Homeland Security to raid repair shops that use parts it deems to be counterfeit.

In the end, though, Tekserve fell victim to New York City's long-skyrocketing real estate prices: A repair shop simply couldn't continue to survive in a space of that size.

"That Tekserve is closing is very disappointing but it's kind of inevitable. The world has changed around us," Demenus said. "Our goal was to have a great place to work. We've launched a lot of careers, some of our employees have gotten married. We've had a great run here, so I'm very proud of it. I've come to peace with it. I've enjoyed it."

And so, with the store's closing earlier this month, Manhattan has lost a place that many have said was a cornerstone of the neighborhood.

"We had a long relationship with individual customers and we had this long relationship with the community as being the place where people brought stuff when it was broken," Travis said. "Apple's not going to be able to fix every problem, and so people are going to have to figure out what to do. There's a nice opportunity here if someone wants to open a nice mom-and-pop shop."

Tuesday was a chance for some of those old timers to take a piece of Tekserve home with them. An original watercolor painting of the storefront elicited the most fervent bidding war while I was at the auction. A freelance repair guy with long grey hair and a Hawaiian shirt showed off a video downconverter he had scored. Less sentimental opportunists hurriedly tapped eBay searches into their phones, cross checking Tekserve's auctions with the greater internet market in hopes of finding arbitrage opportunities. Old employees stopped in to give some last hugs and bid on old memories.

"When I got here, I took pictures of all these things and sent them to my friends to nerd out over all this vintage tech," Kim Slade, a repair tech who has been at the store less than a year, told me. "I would want to buy some of the things but I don't have the money for it. Hopefully people make good homes for them."

"It's been kind of somber the last month," she added. "We're kind of just getting our schedules on a week-to-week basis so I don't know when we'll stop. I'm definitely going to stay to the very end."