| Sunday, February 29, 2004 |
11:35 - Shared Hallucination
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Yesterday was a pretty full day. Lance and I went flying from San Jose down to Monterey to pick up my folks who were spending the day there; we coaxed them into the back seat of the Cessna and took off for Harris Ranch (near Coalinga in the Central Valley) around 3:30 PM. Had some awesome (of course) steaks there, and headed back, returning to Monterey at about 9:00. Then flew home and collapsed.
Largely because I was up early. Kris and I got up in the 6:00 hour to head up to San Francisco for the grand opening of the brand-new flagship store on Stockton and Market/Ellis, and it seems Apple has beaten me to the punch in posting cool photos. (They're a lot better than mine anyway. Except I did get to shake Steve's hand. I think he was freaked out by me. He scuttled away prettty quickly.)
Here's how the line went, in any case. Up Stockton one block, then down Ofarell one block, then down Powell (cable car operators kept giving us quizzical stares, wondering what the hell we could be lining up for-- and tourists just figured we were another bizarre San Francisco sight, possibly anti-war protesters of some kind), back down Ellis to the store's front door, around the California Savings flatiron building, and then down Market for a long block or so. It was really blinkin' impressive.
Inside the store, the bonhomie was palpable. The glass staircase is beyond cool. The large Genius Bar, with LCD panels showing video-ified tips on using OS X implanted into the board above the genii's heads, was a showpiece of engineering. I didn't get one of the $250 Lucky Bags-- they apparently sold out within about 20 minutes, and I was an hour back in the line. But one lady standing in line with us sneaked ahead, ducked into the store early, bought one, and came back to show it off to us. Lots of AirPort Base Stations in these bags (only 20% had iPod minis, I believe), but lots more cool stuff that most people wouldn't likely already have (though I do... heh heh).
A thoroughly surreal experience. We only got hassled by one cloth-cap-wearing enviro-hippie, and one extremely polite dude selling the Street Sheet; I figured that all the intelligent panhandlers ought to be working this line, because there's probably a higher concentration of rich people here with already-loose wallets than anywhere in the city outside the Orpheum.
So I was all over California yesterday. No wonder I slept so soundly.
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