At midnight Thursday, outside Apple’s (AAPL) flagship store on 5th Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan, there were around 130 to 140 people camped out, many under various forms of tarps or other shelter, waiting for Apple’s newest iPad.
There had been a light drizzle earlier in the night, and it felt fairly chilly at 45 degrees.
Two gentlemen at the top of the line were sleeping in folding chairs.
Third in line, standing in what appeared to be pajama bottoms and a down jacket, with a Lakers cap on, was Amanda, who has been waiting since Wednesday morning at Apple’s store for her chance at an iPad. Or, rather, someone else’s chance. Amanda told me she is adopted and was hoping to sell her spot to raise money for a trip to Peru to be united with her birth parents.
Amanda and her friend Laurie were joined by Fernando outside the Fifth Avenue Store late Thursday.Amanda had waited in line a year ago, for the iPad 2 unveiling, where she made $900. Now, she seemed to have an offer from a man for $1,000, apparently a foreign visitor. He promised to return in the morning. Not that she’s not an Apple fan: she is an avid user of her iPhone and would happily use an iPad.
Sitting in Amanda’s folding chair was her good friend, Laurie, who has been spelling Amanda and providing practical assistance. She brought an external rechargeable battery that she’d juiced up at her workplace, in order for Amanda to keep her cell phone going through the night.
Laurie is a devoted MacBook user, but the one time she had an iPad, which she bought from someone else, she resold it at a profit. She now regretted the move and wished she had her own .
Next to them is Fernando, waiting since early Thursday. There had been only 9 people in line behind this group until it suddenly blossomed late Thursday into a line snaking around the corner and almost all the way down 58th street.
Over on 66th Street and Broadway, crews could be seen through the window getting set for Apple’s big day, putting iPad signs up around the store.
Outside, Jay, who by midnight had been there approximately five hours, said he was an accidental first-in-line. Behind him was a clutter of perhaps 20 people. When he was shut out of iPad pre-orders almost instantly a week ago, he took the weekend to mull over his plan of action. By Monday, he’d decided he would wait outside the store. He was surprised to find himself at the head of the line after thinking maybe he would simply be somewhere in the first bunch of people to get in the store.
Jay is an iPhone user and is thinking of getting a WiFi-only iPad, as he already has a cellular hotspot he can carry around with him for wide-area connectivity. A first time iPad buyer, he told me he wanted one because he’d played around with his friends’ iPads and liked them. He figured he would use it for surfing the Web or watching a movie.
Would he ever do this again? I asked, wait in line for hours? Never! he insisted. But he’d only been there five hours so far, I pointed out. Not that long a wait. But I’ve got another 8 hours to go! he exclaimed. “I’m not doing this again.”
Down on 14th Street and 9th avenue, Apple’s meatpacking district store seemed even more busy, with bright lights on and staff going up and down the spiral staircase, moving carts of boxes. A line of perhaps a dozen people was installed at curbside on 14th Street.
John had been at the head of the line since 9:30 in the morning. The last time he’d done anything like this was for the iPhone 4, in the summer of 2010, when he managed to be fourth in line, waiting from 11:30 in the morning the day before at this same store.
This would be his first iPad. He passed on the first model because it didn’t have cameras. And he passed on iPad 2 because he thought maybe the next model would have something better. He has a MacBook at home, he told me, and has had all of the iPhone units since the first one, except for the iPhone 4S, which he skipped in favor of waiting for what he believes may be an iPhone 5, perhaps later this year.
I asked John what he wanted an iPad for. Nothin’ special, he said, just for playing music and reading books. He was planning on getting a 64-gigabyte model. I like to put a lot of stuff on there, he said with a laugh, and I don’t want to have to worry about filling it up.
Down in Soho, where Apple’s store at the corner of Prince and Green Streets is closed for renovation, one has to walk two blocks down Green to a temporary facility Apple has set up.
From Left, Lamin, Fernando, and Thomas had a bit of a scuffle with people they suspected were Chinese resellers before claiming their place at the front of the line at the Soho store.Outside was a crowd of perhaps a 20 or so people. Three men were chatting at the head of the line. When I asked who was first, they pointed to Fernando, a Web designer for the Environmental Protection Agency’s offices in New York.
Fernando, however, had gotten there a little while after Thomas, a street artist and employee of a non-profit, who’d arrived around 5 pm. They were joined a little while later by Lamin, whose parents came to America from Gambia. Three strangers discovering camaraderie in the middle of the night by dint of circumstance.
Fernando was already a user of the first iPad, which he carries around the office with him to help out with his IT duties. He was hoping to get the new one more for personal use. That would involve music creation, he told me, as his band already uses Apple’s GarageBand program on the iPad.
More to the point, however, Fernando was a chronic line waiter. Xbox, PlayStation, movie tickets — you name it, and he’d probably sat for it, he said.
His longest wait ever had been six days he spent waiting to get into “The Phantom Menace,” the Star Wars prequel that he said turned out not to be worth the effort.
He said he was dying for an iPad for 4G “and a beautiful screen.”
Thomas, however, was less of a fan. He showed me his iPhone 4, whose screen was still intact but was displaying fascinating digital zones of completely useless garbage thanks to a drop from a height. He would never buy another iPhone he said, even though he claimed to love Apple and love Steve Jobs, its late founder.
His wife, he said, was a big Apple fan and wanted everything the company produced. She might get an iPad at some point, but in the meantime, Thomas was making $140 by waiting. He answered a woman’s ad on Craigslist looking for a space holder, and was planning for her to meet him at the store when it opened.
Lamin has had every Apple product that’s come out, but this was his first time queueing up. He had found an old mattress a few blocks away and brought it to the store, thinking it would be his bed overnight. Then an employee told him he couldn’t keep it outside the store so he was force to discard it in a pile of trash. He noticed ruefully some people further down the line picked up the cushion and were now using it themselves.
There was some controversy at this store. Fernando, Lamin and Thomas indicated to me a group of Asian people just behind them in line, huddled on torn-up pieces of cardboard. They’re resellers, all three insisted. They were in line to grab units of iPads and take them to a van around the corner, after which the units would be taken to China and sold for a high markup, the three men contended.
How did they know all this? I asked. Thomas said all the Web discussion and tweets remarked that the Soho store was known for this kind of operation, at every Apple product unveiling. Also, Thomas said he recognized some of the individuals from altercations he’d had on nearby West Broadway over vending spots. He and his wife, who put their art out on tables, often sparred with these very same individuals, who tried to claim sidewalk space to sell art reproductions.
Earlier in the evening there had been a ruckus when the Asian customers had tried to push their way to the front, arguing with Thomas, Fernando and Lamin. A store manager cooled things down, taking the there men’s side. But it got hot there for a minute, said Fernando, about which both Thomas and Lamin concurred.
I went up to three Asian gentlemen who had been sitting but had now gotten up for a smoke break. None seemed to speak English, so my attempts to ask them about why they were there failed. As I walked the line, most, indeed, seemed to be Asian, and none could speak English. I went up to a heavyset Asian man who was standing at the edge of the queue, appearing not to be waiting but to be chatting with those waiting.
He’s the boss, the ringleader, Thomas had insisted to me. The manager responsible for organizing the resellers. Fernando and Lamin had both concurred. He’d been walking up and down the line but not really waiting, all night long, drawing their suspicion. He, too, appeared to speak no English when I approached him.
This particular aspect of the iPad phenomenon would have to wait for another day, I told myself, and I hailed a cab home.
Apple shares this morning are up 55 cents at $586.90.
Fin
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