Night Owls, Apple Freaks, Apple Converts Flock to New Cube

Long after Bergdorf Goodman, Club Monaco, and FAO Schwarz have closed, the cube is open. For city dwellers in need of a 3 a.m. shopping fix, it is open all night long.The cube, of course, is the recently unveiled Apple Store at the General Motors Building’s plaza on Fifth Avenue.At 2 a.m., the store is likely to boast a few peculiar fellows and a bar-hopping drunk or two, but for the most part the store is filled with mostly normal kids – well, as normal as college students can be. When it gets late, the store also has its fair share of Apple freaks, Apple lovers, Apple converts, and people with Apple fetishes.“From what I hear, it’s open 24/7 – the city that never sleeps,” Aristedes Philip Duval, whose orange pants are spotted with flowers and whose black vest is lined with political buttons with slogans such as “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Bush is President,” said.Mr. Duval – a stream of consciousness of a man whose wavy blonde hair, reminiscent of Christopher Lloyd’s Dr. Emmett Brown in “Back to the Future,” would certainly qualify him as one of the more eccentric customers – considers his relationship with Apple products to be something of a fetish.“People, especially creatives, need centers like this,” he said.“It’s too far uptown,” his friend, David Peel, who lives in Greenwich Village, complained. If Apple opened a store at Greene Street, it “would be perfect,” he said.The all-night Apple Store also attracts tourists. “I’m an Apple freak,” Vincent Lemma, 29, said at about 1:20 a.m. A native New Yorker, Mr. Lemma has been living in Italy for 10 years. “Twenty-four/seven is fantastic,” he said. “I’m a night person.”“When I lived here, Fifth Avenue was more of a happening place,” Mr. Lemma, 29, bemoaned, saying he had been looking for some nightlife last Thursday night. “Strangely enough, I’ve found it here” – here being the 20,000- square-foot Apple Store.Another tourist, Miguel Gonzalez, a 24-year-old Mexican, said he is not a night person – notwithstanding his declaration coming at almost 3 a.m. on Thursday. He was about to go to sleep, he contended, when some of his friends said, “Let’s go to the Mac store.”Some come because they can’t help it. “I live down the block in Trump Tower. I’ve been every day since this opened,” David Cohen said while laughing. “It’s wild.” But he says he’s not a night person. “I’m going to leave in 20 minutes,” he said at 1:15 a.m.One theory contends that some of the overnight crowd was there for criminal activity. “I think people are freeloading music onto their iPods,” Erick Kontos whispered. Mr. Kontos said he himself was there at 2:30 a.m. for purely legitimate reasons: He had just gotten off from work as a manager of a nearby restaurant.For one of the city’s late-night groups, the Apple Store may be a daydream come true.“Oh my God, it’s perfect for college kids,” Nicole Otero, a Columbia University student who was there with her friend Camilla Moshayedi, said. They came after they lost their wireless connection in Ms. Moshayedi’s Upper East Side apartment. “My friend is a little obsessed with Facebook, so we were checking out Facebook and our email,” Ms. Otero said. “We’re up all night,” she said, later specifying that her typical bedtime is between 2:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. After a break at a Starbucks at around 2:30, the two eventually left the Apple Store at 4:30 a.m.“There is so little to do at 3 on a weekday,” a student at the College of Staten Island, Jamie Starr, said. “We wanted to see something cool.” He continued: “Honestly, it would be nice to see more interesting places open at night. For a city that never sleeps, the nightlife sucks. I never really find anything open besides corner stores and bars.”

Night Owls, Apple Freaks, Apple Converts Flock to New Cube

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