Pity the poor hedge fund manager who’ll head over to Grand Central Station this afternoon to take the train back to his Connecticut estate. What’s he supposed to do if the battery on his iPhone, iPod, or iPad is drained? That’s clearly what MTA officials had first and foremost in their minds when they greenlit a plan to turn a portion of the iconic commuter train station’s main concourse into an Apple Store. Now hedge fund managers and others of their moneyed ilk can just buy new iPhones, iPods and iPads instead of having to suffer the indignity of making the trip home without their functioning gadgets!
Reports the Wall Street Journal:
Grand Central Terminal’s iconic main concourse, with its ceiling of glittering stars, will likely welcome another icon later this year: a single, glowing white apple.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials offered a glimpse Monday morning at the Apple store proposed for the train station, near the terminal’s east staircase. Apple plans to start building the gadget shop immediately, should the agency’s board give its approval Wednesday. Construction is expected to take about four months.
In addition to the space currently occupied by Metrazur, Apple will move into an adjacent, currently vacant balcony on the northeast side of the terminal.
The MTA also announced today that Grand Central will be getting a Shake Shack, home of the burger I’d most likely crawl across a bed of broken glass and kill for. This inspired a hilarious bit of penis envy/class warfare from MTA board members whose constituents frequent Penn Station.
“It makes the Penn Station customers no longer second-class citizens…It makes them third-class citizens,” one of them said. Another added, “This creates not only a digital, but a cheeseburger divide, between the two.”
I’d make a joke here about nothing being more indicative of what’s wrong with America at the moment than citizens in an uproar over a train station not having a retail electronics store and a burger joint, but Penn Station is truly an awful, smelly, soul-draining dump. I don’t blame them for being pissed. Who wouldn’t rather have this over crap like Sbarro’s pizza?
Even better, you don’t have to worry about being attacked by squirrels in Grand Central, last time I checked…