The other day I received an email from Apple announcing that a new store was opening pretty close to me. Ridge Hill in Yonkers, NY



I’m a sucker for a free T-shirt, so the kids and I hopped in the car and took the 30 minute ride. Ridge Hill is pretty nice. Pretty upscale; the place you’d image Apple putting a store. It’s an outside mall. Not a strip mall, more like a compound. It has streets, avenues and parking garages. It’s like a mini city. Google maps hasn’t been updated, because the corner where the Apple Store is just appears as an empty lot.



The store opened at 10:00. We got there at 10:20. There was already well over 150 people inside the store. We only had to wait about 5 minutes before we got to the front of the line and inside the store. We were all handed our free t-shirt. Score!



The place was packed.



Despite the place being a madhouse, there was no difficulty in getting help. I wanted to pick up a new Smart Case for my wife’s iPad 2 while I was there. I didn’t know if the new Smart Cases were made exclusively for the iPad 3 or if they also fit the iPad 2. It wasn’t obvious by reading the packaging. I found an associate right away and had my question answered. I was also able to check out right there and then. It wash’t until I got home later that I noticed that it does say it on the bottom in really light grey text that it does fit iPad 2s and 3s.

I wanted to play around with the new Retina Display MacBook Pros for a little bit, but they were all tied up with other customers. Some of the tables were so crowded it was hard even getting to them, so we headed out. Hey, we got what we came for: shirts and a case. So all was good.

Here’s the shirt.



The standard-issue Apple logo and store location.



With “Designed in California” on the back.



I also grabbed one of these brochures on the way out. I’m a sucker for those too.