In recent years, however, stores including J.Crew, Urban Outfitters, and, now, the crown jewel of retail excess - Apple - moved in without incident.īefore the audience’s minds could linger on how exactly Williamsburg transformed into a place to buy $300-plus smartphones, Barlia began highlighting the store’s architectural details, using euphemisms that have been scientifically proved to stir Jane Jacobs in her grave. Starting in the the early aughts, the neighborhood - once an affordable home for working-class Puerto Rican, Jewish, and Eastern European immigrants - struggled to maintain its identity as chains moved into its storefronts and high-rise condos lined its waterfront. Just six years ago, the opening of a new Duane Reade caused Williamsburg residents to protest. ![]() When he goes, I’m lucky enough to get a bag of zeppoles when he comes back home.” He’s so connected to the neighborhood that he still comes every year to visit the local feast, just a couple blocks away, every July. And I grew up listening to him talk about his childhood stories swimming in the pool just across the street, outside this window on my left. “This one is particularly close to me because my dad grew up in the neighborhood in the ’50s and ’60s. “It takes a lot of time and effort when we’re selecting these types of locations,” he said. Wearing a WWDC-esque button-up shirt–and–jeans outfit, Apple’s New York market director, Jason Barlia, opened the event with a tale that politely hinted at the history of Williamsburg - once an impoverished, drug-ridden neighborhood and artist’s enclave. On Thursday morning, a crowd of journalists gathered for a preview of the new store, sitting atop low wooden cubes before a giant 6K screen that read “Apple Williamsburg” in the company’s signature Myriad font. ![]() Apple will open its first Brooklyn store there this Saturday on an exceptionally gentrified patch of Bedford Avenue that is home to an HSBC Bank, an Equinox, and a newly christened Whole Foods. Company senior vice president of retail and online stores Angela Ahrendts offered The New York Times a very Apple explanation for the update: “The next generation just wants to flow.”Īnd flow the Groves will, moving next into Williamsburg, a neighborhood where man buns go to thrive. ![]() At that opening, Apple introduced its Genius Grove - a more open space featuring leather benches surrounded by ficuses where customers are invited to sit and wait while technical experts service their gadgets. Well, technically it was sentenced to death in May, when Apple opened a new location in San Francisco’s Union Square that eliminated the mainstay appointment bar that had become a symbol of frustration for the company’s retail customers.
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