How do you like them Apples?
Gadget giant Apple is finally opening its first Brooklyn retail store in Williamsburg on Saturday — thrilling locals who are relieved to have the Bedford Avenue sidewalk back after years of construction, if less excited about the electronics emporium itself.
“I’m glad it’s done, the construction work and scaffolding was taking up so much room on the sidewalk and it was becoming really aggravating,” said Susan Visakowitz, who lives a few blocks from the store at N. Third Street. “I have mixed feelings about it actually being here, but I’m definitely glad it’s done.”
Construction on the store took around two years, but Brooklynites have been speculating about a Kings County Apple Store since at least 2007, when rumors began swirling that the company was eyeing the nabe — and were buoyed again in 2010 when then Borough President Marty Markowitz sent Steve Jobs an e-mail on a then newfangled gizmo called an iPad, demanding he open a store in the borough after the shame of Staten Island getting one first.
Tragically, Jobs died the following year without ever seeing the Apple logo light up the Borough of Kings.
The airy space at N. Third Street follows the company’s new retail strategy in the face of flagging sales — trying to create “town squares” where locals just come to hang out.
Like so many town squares, it is decked out with wooden boxes as seats and a giant 6,000-pixel video screen, which the store also plans to use for tutorials and events.
The rest of the space features the standard lineup of Apple computers and accessories, plus third-party products including headphones, drones, and video-game controllers.
To fit in with the hipster ‘hood, the company tore down the brick building that previously stood on the site and erected an entirely new one designed to look like an old warehouse — sporting exposed brick walls, factory-style pendant lighting, timber ceilings, and a concrete floor — a spokesman said.
Seasoned readers will remember that this paper prophesied that this would be the location of any Williamsburg Apple Store way back in 2012 — though a reader poll at the time incorrectly predicted the borough’s inaugural outpost would go in across from Barclays Center.
Apple isn’t the only bourgie brand making its debut on that Bedford Avenue block this week — an equally long-awaited Whole Foods opened across the road on Thursday, and an outpost of yuppie gym chain Equinox is opening in the same building soon.
