> All my local electronics shops (in the Bay Area!) have closed down.

Mouser Electronics is less than an hour away from me. Microcenter is an extremely short drive (I routinely get lunch around there) and has lots of hobby electronics stuff. The local hacker space is filled with people, full classes almost every day and people making things all the time. The university near me has a busy hackerspace as well for students. Meetups for software developers are routinely packed. I'm surrounded by chip fabs, high-value equipment manufacturing, board fabrication, and engineering firms every corner I turn.