I'll order from anywhere. Shit's fucked right now and you know most skate shop employees could make more money working at like APC or something. A cool thing someone mentioned in that parade thread is that you can go on parade, put something in your cart, it'll tell you the shop, and you can just go to the shops site. If they don't have the wheelbase you can check a) the brands site or b)tactics or SPot.
The true strat is to get this app called Shop (they were called something more interesting when I signed up). It scans your emals for orders and you can log in on a lot of skate shop sites and it saves your payment. Then the app gives you notifications at different points in the shipping process, which is life saving if dudes are grabbing your stuff off the porch
Never really had a bad experience just ordering from the "cool" shop in a city, especially when you're looking for a certain popular shape or just boards from a company that hasn't dropped in awhile or a shoe collab that's sold out quick. Respect to Arts and Rec, they had the Quasi Crockett his, Radio in Pittsburgh, they had the Quasi proto when no else did, and Holistic, who had the Sci-Fi Fantasy zip up I wanted. Premier in Grand Rapids (i think) has a fire shoe sale section; every shoe I skated in college when I was broke was from there.
Even if you get totally screwed on an online order, I think in-person vibes matter more in terms of whether or not you gonna avoid a shop. That said I personally wouldn't order from humidity based on that passport board story, so online courtesy obviously does matter.