Looking Southwest

Looking Southwest
Originally uploaded by david.

Adriana and I took a walk through midtown last night and ended up at the new Apple store.

Lists make for lazy English, but here I go anyway:

• Apple is clearly channeling the Louvre. It's placed in the most Parisian-feeling corner of the city, just a half of a block away from Manhattan's Grand Army Plaza.


• Steve Jobs is clearly channeling Willy Wonka, all the way down to the Glass Elevator.


• FAO Schwarz looked like a deserted film set. Kind of sad for me, since it used to be my favorite store. My favorite was the basement in the old Forbidden Planet (on 11th st., not 13th). They had tens of thousands of back issues of comics in hardly sorted white cardboard boxes and Go-Bots. Every Go-Bot. Come to think of it, that is the exact opposite retail experience of the new Apple Store.


• One of the City's great architectural treasures, The Plaza, looked like the crummy construction site it is after her very public battle with the Hotel Workers Union. Just down 59th St. the Time Warner Center looked lonely and dark.


• No, we didn't go in.

Comments

[Mom]

My favorite Forbidden Planet-type experience was going into our own basement, where your room housed boxes of Star Wars figures and Go-Bots. Every Star Wars figure and every Go-Bot. Come to think of it---some of them are still there! And now you're into clean lines and transparency. Who would've thunk it?

[Matt Haughey]

"No, we didn't go in"

Liar!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48889105183@N01/150066198/

[David Jacobs]

We went back the next day!

[David Jacobs]

I think I only had a handful of Go-bots! We (we? My Mom & Dad) only bought Go-bots when the Transformers were sold out.