Largest Apple Store In The U.S. Will Ruin My City

The largest Apple Store in the United States opens tomorrow in Boston, my city of residence, and will likely become a drool-soaked mob-fest that'll have me buying tickets to San Francisco earlier than originally planned.

This three-floor monstrosity of a building has been in development for eight years, mostly because rich Back Bayers (the neighborhood in which the store rests) are freaks about building preservation and history. Granted, the building torn down was a piece of crap just rotting there, but still—old money has to maintain some sense of dignity.

Wealth-hatin' aside, I have to agree with purists out there. This building—and pardon my French—is fucking ugly. It cheapens the entire block. It's surrounded on either side by nice-looking brownstones. Character and class. Across the street is a fancy-dancy Lord & Taylor with a conservative building front. Nothing around this glass-and-plastic castle even remotely resembles what they've jammed in there. It's an eyesore.

Not to mention the horrible hoopla that'll surround tomorrow's 6pm opening. Oh Christ it'll be awful. You know how when a McDonald's opens in a small town, the lines stretch outside the door for hours, even though every single customer, at one point in their lives, has eaten at McDonald's? The same will be true, double-fold, for this Apple Store.

I imagine everybody waiting outside either owns an iPod or has stopped at Boston's other Apple Store near Lechmere in Cambridge (which isn't technically Boston but whatever; we own it). So what's the point? To check out the architecture? Is that what draws country bumpkin's to the new McDonald's?

Or is that $600 economic stimulus check burning in everybody's pocket so they just have to get a new Apple product, even though the desktops haven't been significantly updated in weeks, a new iPod isn't even on the line, the iPhone is sold out and iPhone 2.0 isn't set for release for another month?

And three floors? Do we really need three floors of Apple? Gizmodo spews the layout:

The first floor is all Mac, the company's "most important product"... Floor two is dedicated to iPod, iPhone and all the third party accessories Apple offers. The third floor is dedicated to service, with a massive Genius Bar, sections for one-on-one, workshops and a second location for Apple's new "Pro Labs" initiative.

Blargh.

Before you put my head on a pole, I own an iPod and a MacBook. I like Apple products as much as the next fellah. I don't, however, understand the Cult of Mac, nor do I—in a typical Masshole kind of way—tolerate window-gazing tourists bogging up Boylston Street, causing major traffic delays and generally making a nuisance out of an already obnoxious urban environment.

If any readers live in Boston and plan on attending this opening, check out the roof of Lord & Taylor across the street. Just ... keep an eye out ... on the roof ... for a little red dot....