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I was up at 2:00 am Saturday morning, debating whether or not I should drive down to Palo Alto and sleep out at the Apple Store. The Sandman wanted me home, however, and I acquiesced to his sleepy demands. As I had already been to the Apple Store at the Mall of America in Minnesota in August, I figured I didn’t need to be the die-hard Apple supporter this time.

My alarm clock woke up me a few hours later, but I was in no condition to get up. “Ugh, do I have to go? After all, I’ve already been to the Apple Store in MN!” I kept telling myself. Lying in bed for an hour, I pontificated on my lethargy and laziness before dragging my butt out of the house and into my car. My equipment consisted of the Canon D30, a Gitzo tripod, and the 70-200, 50mm, and 17-35mm lenses. Along the way, I was thinking about what type of shots I wanted to get. Judging from coverage I had seen from the other Apple Store openings, I knew that there would be many cameras covering the event. I wanted something unique and it hit me what I wanted: a rooftop view of the opening. It helped matters that this was the first (and only?) Apple Store that’s freestanding.

All previous Apple Stores were located within malls. The line snaked around the corner of the building and down one and a half blocks. It turned out that the entire executive team from Apple was there, from Steve Jobs to Jon Rubenstein, who was manning the Genius Bar! Since the line was quite long and since I had already been to an Apple Store, I wasn’t in any mood to “faire la queue.”

Getting onto the roof of a building is harder than one might think. Many of the buildings or structures I tried didn’t allow roof access without a key. Those whose roofs I did get onto had views that were obstructed by trees or other objects. I walked across Kipling Street to a side alley behind some University Avenue shops. Behind the Franklin Covey shop, I saw a fire escape attached to the back of the building! It didn’t go all the way down, so I had to ask one of the employees if I could borrow the ladder I spied in the back of the store. He was accomodating, thankfully, and I soon found myself on top of the building.

From this vantage point, I had a great view of the side of the building and the throng of people waiting to be among the first 1000 to get an Apple Store Palo Alto t-shirt. From where I was, I noticed dozens upon dozens of people with digital cameras and videocameras taking pictures of the event. I think that I saw more digital cameras there than I ever have; apparently, I wasn’t the only one who felt that this was an event worth capturing for posterity’s sake.

I’m curious to find out how many of the people there came with a desire to walk away with a new computer or software. I suspect that a lot of people were there to get a free copy of MacOS X 10.1, the new version of the operating system that Apple recently released at Seybold SF. It remains to be seen whether or not the Apple Stores will be economically viable for the company. Apple is betting on the Apple stores to help raise awareness among the 95% of consumers that don’t currently own an Apple computer. As they say, “5 down, 95 to go.”

Before I left, I went around the corner of the building to see how far the line went. I ran into Andrew and Sasha, two guys with whom I attended Stanford. Andrew was the Apple student representative during our years at the Farm and Sasha took practically every Symbolic Systems course there was without being a Sym Sys major! It was good to run into a familiar face, though I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see more people that I knew. This was a big event, after all, and I figured that more of my Apple die-hard fans would have arrived. Then again, if they truly were die-hards, they would probably have been in the store already!

After saying goodbye to Andrew and Sasha, I walked back to the front of the Apple Store and took a few shots before calling it a day. It would have been nice to have entered the store to take pictures of Jobs and the rest of the exec team, but I reckon there’ll be enough pictures of that on the web from others later in the day. In getting to the roof of a building overlooking the Apple Store, I got what I came from.

There are more pictures that I took from the grand opening of the Apple Store in Palo Alto, California, on October 6, 2001. Click the link below to enter the photogallery!