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.

Some say St. Louis is a real city because we finally have a grocery store downtown, but I say if you want to point to a single item that makes St. Louis a city, we’d pick the fact we are finally getting our very own Hackerspace!

What is a hakerspace?  Jesus you’re a n00b.  Ok, I’ll humor you.

A hackerspace is a basically a shared space were people can get together and work on projects, show what they know or find some help.  Basically is a total geekfest, but in a cool way.