Saturday, November 19, 2005

A fun time about to be had-Apple Store @ The Gateway

I am going to chronicle my adventure at the grand opening of the Apple Store here in Salt Lake City. I arrived at about 12:30 am and made a short trip into The Gateway to check out the store. The plywood barriers were all down. Plastic covers the windows, and three gentlemen have formed the line. They tell me how to park close and invite me to share the power they have run. Between the power and the Apple Store's Wireless, I am pretty much set for the night.
3:30 am and we were joined by a young couple about 2:00 am. 6 in line and counting. It is quiet except for the occasional train passing behind The Gateway.
Actually managed to sleep for a couple of hours. Woke a few minutes before 6:00 to other voices and see about another 15 in line. Lots of personal Mac histories being shared.
7:40 am and the crowd is starting to grow. There are about 75-80 in line now. The interesting thing is that about 1/4 of them have their Powerbooks or iBooks out. Hmmm... I wonder what their doing. The general contractor is onsite and waiting for the managers to get in. There are now 3 security guards waiting as well and the window washer is working on the outside glass. When the managerss get here they will peel the plastic of off the inside class and clean it.
9:00 am - 1 hour to go. I would estimate the crowd to be between 300-400 at this point but I can't tell for sure any more. The employees are coming out about every five minutes to excite the crowd. The mall management is starting to look a little worried.
9:20 am-The first guy in line is interviewed by a local newstation, then the first three are interviewed by a newspaper reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. He even gets to me, so I guess I will be in the paper tomorrow.
10:00 am- They allow the first 70 or so people in. Store employees cheering, music blaring, it was awesome. As anyone leaves the store they allow another in. The queue is still huge. As I left I would imaging there were still 500-600 people in line. I talked to an employee who has worked at two other openings and she said this rivaled either one of those. Photos here Podcast and Vidcast to follow by tomorrow.

5 comments:

marty mankins said...

Nice write up. FWIW, I ended up in one of your pics that you took.... pic #28. If you don't mind, I would like to use that on my web page where I plan to mention the new Apple store.

Unknown said...

Marty, Feel free to use the photo.

Andy Griffin said...

Hey Kelly, it was nice camping out next to you for 8 hours! It was great to meet you! Thanks for the documentation. Needless to say, I was a bit underprepared myself.
-Andy

marty mankins said...

Thx Kelly. Here's the site:

chillywilly.org

I have to say that I am way impressed with the Apple Store. It's someone we've been waiting for a long time here in Utah.

Anonymous said...

I loved being at the new Apple store opening. It showed me what I can do to keep better in touch with a geographically disbursed family. Can you share you secrets to putting this together? What hardware, software and editors did you use? etc.

Please email me a link to your blog on how you pulled this together.

Thanks, Dave hanksd@earthlink.net