New York Is Not Salvageable As A Unitary State

109 years after Brooklyn was ignominiously and unnaturally bound to greater New York, a de facto partition seems to be setting in:

One byte-sized rumor about an Apple store coming to Brooklyn sparked a borough-wide fit of drooling as iMac lovers fantasized about caressing Steve Jobs’s latest products without having to leave the borough.

. . .

The stir began on Sept. 13, when Racked.com, a retail Web site, posted an “exclusive,” claiming with certainty that Apple was going to open its fourth New York City location in Brooklyn.

“Brace yourself,” read the hyperventilating post. “Apple is scouring Brooklyn, seeking a home in the 718 area code.”

Gothamist followed with an ensuing post from a woman calling herself “Dana Hemphill” and claiming to be an “Aplle Northeastern Representative for Retail Sales.” (The misspelling was hers, not ours, so take her post with a grain of silicon.)

“We are currently in negotiation to open our 1st retail location in Brooklyn, NY on Atlantic Avenue, not far from Court Street,” wrote the poster. “I am not located in NYC, but hopefully our store should up and running by the second quarter of 2008.”

Alas, a call to Apple headquarters turned up no Hemphills (and no Aplle representatives of any kind). A spokeswoman for Apple scoffed at the notion that anyone should take a posting on a blog seriously.

“People do interesting things all the time, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be taking that as confirmation,” said Amy Barney, an Apple (not Aplle) spokeswoman.

Even so, in a city where Manhattan already has an Apple store in SoHo and another on Fifth Avenue — for God’s sake, even Staten Island has one! — the rumors have credibility.

Indeed, one former Apple store employee, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity, told The Brooklyn Paper that there’s been talk of a Brooklyn shop for at least a year.

“A lot of the higher-ups were asking us ‘cool kids’ what area of Brooklyn we thought would be best [a year ago],” she said. “I thought either a small store on Bedford Avenue or a store in Park Slope.”