Love Amid the Gigabytes
By C. J. HUGHES
Published: June 4, 2006
IF you want to get a computer repaired, the new Apple store in Midtown, with its funky glass cube entrance and round-the-clock operating hours, probably fits the bill. But for a happening scene, the Midtown Apple may never approach the original, squarely in SoHo's heart at the corner of Prince and Greene Streets.
Past its formal brick exterior lie rooms that pulse with the energy of a downtown club, spaces whose looks are as glamorous and hip as the customers who gather inside.
Like churches and banks that are reborn as clubs, this former post office has acquired an almost incongruous new identity, with glass floors, blond wood and a skylight, although it does retain its regal pediment-topped door.
On this particular Sunday, a crowd of about 150 people slowly circled the first floor to the sound of Joni Mitchell singing about a free man in Paris, bobbing their heads and sizing up one another from head to toe. For every person actually buying something, there seemed to be another who had shown up just to loll about in the company of those who make hipster style look effortless. Two men wearing snug wool caps slid over to a well-equipped iMac and proceeded to check their e-mail, their faces twisted with punk-rock scowls.
In another part of the store, two identically dressed men who used to be D.J.'s in the meatpacking district chatted up a clerk about playing video on iPods. Neither of them was exactly George Clooney, but to this crowd, they were definitely celebrities.
Britt Ivy, 26, who is an assistant director in an art gallery and lives in the Gramercy Park neighborhood, sat on a low cube, drinking coffee and surveying the crowd. This was her third visit to the store, which opened four years ago. "If you're looking at something, you end up touching it to try it out, and everybody's on top of one another because it's so packed in here," Ms. Ivy said. "It's a very interactive environment."
The store's "Genius Bar" is where Mac users go to fix their iBooks, not to order a glass of bubbly, but the wordplay seems apt. Customers sit on stools at the low-slung counter, striking poses in the hopes of attracting the attention of a worker behind the bar.
Eddie Saenz, a 30-year-old Brooklynite and former Navy recruiter, was leaning against a column on the store's first floor, a diamond stud in one ear and a backwards Yankee cap on his head. Whenever he's in the neighborhood, he tries to drop in, and not just because he prefers Macs to personal computers. "There are tons of hot girls in here," he said. "And some of them wear the craziest clothes here, like pajamas and furry flip-flops."
Given that Mac users are known for being fiercely loyal to their computers and to fellow Mac users, it may be the ideal pool from which to choose a romantic partner. As Deirdre Ganun, 31, who lives near the store and works for a Web site on amateur athletes, said of this group, "It's like part of some nationwide secret society."
And the sparks of romance sometimes do ignite amid the electronics. That was the experience of Kristof Koch, a German student who was in the country on a six-month cross-country vacation. In San Francisco a few months ago, Mr. Koch was in an Apple store when he saw a woman he found attractive standing alone with a map of the city in her hand. Thinking that she might be a fellow tourist, he walked over and started chatting.
During the conversation, he learned that she lived in New York. They had kept in touch, and were to meet later this day at a bar around the corner from the store. On the way, Mr. Koch had stopped by the Apple store in New York to take advantage of the free online access. "I'm just here to check my e-mail," he insisted with an aw-shucks grin. "But this is such a very cool place."
 Sidney Horenstein, a geologist, points out the swirling patterns in the Verde Marina, a granite from India, used in front of the Apple Computer store in Midtown.
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