As our friends at the St. Louis Egotist have already pointed out this week, Apple will be re-opening their St. Louis Galleria location in new bigger digs. It will be Apple’s biggest mall-based store ever, topping out at 6,000 square feet and will feature a new “Genius Lounge” area in the front of the store equipped with free WiFi and cute little emo Apple chicks that will convince you to buy another iPad (“Ok so you have one right? …now think about if you had two!” “Shit, that’s a good point. Sold!”) while you wait for your genius appointment.

“According to mall observers, Starbucks is soon moving its coffee sales operation to the second floor, outside the entrance to the Nordstrom store that opens in September 2011,” Allen wrote. “Apple will then reportedly occupy the 592 square-feet permanent kiosk as a Genius Bar check-in space, Wi-Fi lounge and/or training space.”

The “Genius Lounge” concept would be unique to the St. Louis store, a first of its kind for Apple’s highly successful retail outlets. The new store will occupy over 6,000 square feet, and will have a storefront 55 feet wide.

If you like getting to the Galleria and wading through the old people mall-walking in pastel jumpsuits, you can get a free celebratory t-shirt for being one of the first 1,000 through the doors Saturday morning starting at 9am. Be prepared for the neighborhood kid that wants people to think he’s smart because he’s on his computer all the time (but he’s just playing World of Warcraft and jacking off) to snort at your Apple love though. “Non-replaceable battery huh? Classic Apple, always after your money!” he’ll say, and follow up with “Pffft. What about when you want to upgrade your graphics card to one with 512 mb of RAM or a maybe a solid state hard drive to optimize data throughput? Good luck doing that with Apple Care!” Go ahead and just punch him. It’s your best chance at feeling tough today.

via Apple Insider

I’ve never been to a mall this early before in my life.

It’s 6:45am and I’m walking in to the West County Mall with a b-line for the Apple store.  The glass front of the Apple store is shrouded in darkness with black curtains covering the front of the store while I can only assume the little Apple elves are scurrying around sprinkling the last bits of magic dust on the iPads. I will be only the third person in the “reservation” line, but counting the other line of unwashed “no reservation” people I’m probably closer to the 30 or 40th person total. The guys ahead of me are claiming they were in line at 11pm last night, which at the time I found hard to believe. Later on I found that the two of them and their dog slept in a car parked in the mall lot and walked in when the mall opened at 5am.  An hour later I find out that one of the two guys ahead of me is just along for the ride, making me the second iPad purchaser in line. So close to #1! I don’t feel bad being bested by the guy though, he has waited in line for the iPhone and Xbox 360 previously. He’s a pro.

I didn’t have the guts to stray too far from my spot so the other line remains a mystery to me especially considering these people had the wherewithal to show up at a mall in the wee hours of the morning but not take the 15 seconds to reserve one online.

The line has received a few odd looks from mall walkers, but honestly are we any more weird than someone that wakes up at 5am for no reason other than to put on a garish sweatsuit and walk around in a mall with no stores open? All in all though, people are quite nice to us line people. Apple employees bring us water, a fellow line-mate brought 2 dozen doughnuts to share. California Pizza Kitchen came by offering breakfast pizza. No one knows if it’s free or not. No one takes any.

Soon after we get the first contact from Apple. Apple-guy tells us they will give us line-people free coffee. I don’t drink coffee. A guy two down from me toting a Windows laptop, which to me is a turd in the Apple punchbowl today, high-fived him over…wait for it…the availability of cases.

Soon we enter to the cheers and high-fives of Apple’s employees and, though I can’t hear them, my credit card company executives.

Oh, and the iPad is great.

For more info check out the video below as well as the twitter streams of @mikeflynn_ and @jdspyers, one of my line mates.

Its little secret that the Punching Kitty staff are a fan of Apple’s fine line of luxury computing items, so in case you were wondering, we are picking up an iPad Saturday.

In fact, we will be at both St. Louis area Apple stores!  Why? To get an iPad of course and to hang out with some St. Louis Apple-heads. The plan is to hit the West County Mall Apple store bright and early, around 7am, and then after getting through that line, heading over to the Galleria to see the crowd there!

We’ll be there with our video camera and plenty of Punching Kitty stickers so if you want to talk, hunt me down! We’d love to talk with you about your iPad Holiday experience.

So what are your plans? Do you think this iPad hysteria is just insane? Don’t you think Punching Kitty will look sexy on there?

We hear East St. Louis alum and Olympic athlete Jackie Joyner Kersee stopped by the West County Apple Store the other day to make a purchase.

We hope she came in the store just like she is in that photo to the right.