Apple Fifth Avenue Had the Longest Line We've Ever Seen

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This morning at 7am, Apple unleashed its newest phone, the iPhone 4, upon the city and the world. After consulting the MePa scene (crazy lines!) and the Upper West Side situation (more crazy lines!), let's head over to Fifth Avenue for—spoiler alert—yet more crazy lines.

If you want your iPhone buying experience to involve freebies, fanfare, and the possibility of appearing on Fox News, then the Fifth Avenue Apple Store is the only place to be. At 6:45am, the Apple plaza was swarming with media people and promotional crews. A Naked Cowgirl—not the Naked Cowboy's nemesis, but another one—was wandering around with people from radio station 92.3. (She was the only person there who didn't look overheated.) A guy from AOL Lifestream was handing out cupcakes, bless his heart. And four unsmiling goths carrying umbrellas that read "Take Back Twilight" handed us a pair of false fangs courtesy children-of-the-night clearinghouse Vampire Freaks.

This circus had a captive audience—we've literally never witnessed a line that big, and we've seen some lines in our day. After zigzagging around police barriers in the plaza, the queue ran down 58th Street past FAO Schwarz, up Madison past what has got to be the world's happiest coffee stand man, and back up 59th. When it reached Fifth again, it started over on the opposite side of 59th. In other words, if you're not there now, you might want to wait until tomorrow. Or, say, August.

When the doors opened at 7, the flock of blue-clad Apple store employees around the entrance applauded. So did the line-waiters, many of them also in blue—a company called BuyMeAniPhone.com had handed out shirts last night and everyone, including the homeless man who kept asking for iQuarters for his iCup, was wearing one. Some guy who appeared to be a member of the media blew some sort of big plastic flugelhorn. And the first people in line, all looking utterly drained, trudged forward to receive their reward.
· Surprisingly Long but Subdued Line at the UWS Apple [Racked NY]
· The Line for iPhones in MePa Stretches Almost to the River [Racked]
· The iPhone Wait Has Begun on the Upper West Side [Racked]