After leaving Nintendo World we continued onwards to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. The location is quite nice, situated in an open plaza surrounded by benches, tables and chairs where visitors can take a break from either shopping the length of Fifth Ave or ambling around Central Park. Unfortunately, knowing this, the entire sidewalk in front of the cube is lined up nose to nose with hot dog/pretzel/shish-ka-bob/refreshment vendors which spew a pretty impressive amount of smoke into the air around the glass cube. Apple's cleaning costs must be freakin' astronomical.
Constant stream of visitors even at 5 in the afternoon on a Sunday. And as been reported previously, the glass elevator, while looking pretty cool, seems to be also rather temperamental as it was once again, not open for public use.
The spiral stairway was rather nice too. Entering the store itself revealed, well, a typical Apple Store. Clean and simply laid out, it was larger than what I was expecting. Only difference I noticed is that they seem to have a bigger bag selection here than in the other stores I've been to.
I really like the design of the stairway/elevator structure as well as the open space around it. Think they did a very nice job. Now if they could only make the elevator a bit more reliable...
I could probably stand down in the store and look upwards all day. Especially with a nice sky.
Overall it definitely is the most impressive looking Apple Store that I've seen. A good amount of security around although I think someone can still chuck a rock at the glass cube and take off without being caught if they were fast enough. But they probably have tons of security cameras pointed at the thing too. Anyway, definitely worth a visit if you're in the city; I'm sure it's probably more of a tourist attraction than a computer store.
