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Retailers turn their eyes to the geek

Tune in to the TV Land channel some morning and check out the opening titles to "The Bob Newhart Show." Then as now, Dr. Hartley's morning commute is the non-Chicagoan's introduction to the geography of the city.

Of course, you couldn't film it these days. Now, Dr. Hartley would reach Randolph Street and spend 10 minutes standing in front of a big video window at Marshall Field & Co., watching Webcam footage of people using the Yahoo! Personals service inside the Yahoo! Lounge on the main floor at Wabash and Randolph.

Contemplating the article he's going to write about the proactive impact of technology upon the initiation of interpersonal relationships, he passes by the Apple Store on North Michigan Avenue and, spotting the massive logo, ducks inside to do a couple of quick Googles on online dating while the thought's still fresh in his mind.

Of course, 90 minutes later he's answered his e-mail, and taken an hour-long course on digital video editing. Meanwhile, back at the office, Mr. Carlin has succeeded in making the last member of Hartley's 9 a.m. therapy group cry.

We're at the cusp of a new urban trend, you see. In the olden days, pedestrians couldn't walk two blocks without encountering a public drinking fountain, a public washroom, the Beatles playing live on a rooftop ... all free and supported by area businesses. The age of pedestrian entitlement is finally starting to return to us, in the form of glorious opportunities to get your geek on.

Apple didn't start opening its own stores out of a sense of altruism, you know. Largely, the stores emerged from a sense of need; Macs got slim shelf-space in stores that were crowded with 30 different flavors of PCs, and staffed by under-knowledged people offering customers advice that was suspicious at best ("Word processors? Nope, they don't make those for Macs.")

Still, Apple brass had great ambitions in creating their own retail spaces. Apple set itself the goal of creating attractive, welcoming places for folks to gather. Their flagship stores (such as the megahyperspiffy new North Michigan Avenue location) are as beautiful as modern libraries. All of them are true digital oases. Apple's happy to help you do something about that sudden impulse to own a $3,200 tower work station, but if you want to spend your lunch hour parked behind an iMac writing a story for your Weblog or shopping for a ukulele on eBay, no one will stop you.

And this community philosophy goes beyond mere tolerance for deadbeats. A large theater hosts free classes on a variety of topics, and starting this month the store will host the monthly meetings of The Rest of Us, one of the country's oldest Mac-user groups. Even non- Mac people are flocking to Apple stores.

There's the atmosphere, of course, but there's also an unofficial policy of keeping Wi-Fi access points free and open. So if you have a wireless-enabled laptop or PDA, you're welcome to bring it inside the store's bubble of broadband, no matter what logo's stamped on it.

The Yahoo! Lounge at Marshall Field's is something else. As you read this, construction crews are transforming a section of the store's first floor into a hybrid of "Friends" coffeehouse set and the "Dating Game" stage. The Lounge will be a staffed demo area where shoppers can get up close and personal with a different Yahoo! product every month. The Lounge kicks off with LAUNCH, Yahoo!'s online music offering, and monthly themes through 2003 and beyond include broadband, gaming and tween-to-teen attractions.

The Lounge isn't as ambitious as an Apple store, but it's still a step in the right direction. If the Apple Store is vaguely in the same league as a public library, the Yahoo! Lounge is that tray of free cheese samples at the supermarket.

Yes, it's unabashedly promotional in nature, but hey, cool ... free cheese!

Above all, these stores acknowledge that this is an era in which even grandparents of seven want to learn about digital cameras. Yeah, the marketplace is still dominated by online stores where you're interacting with a PHP script instead of a person, and seedy, Mos Eisley-like megastores whose idea of promoting technology is to leave barely interactive demos running on barely operational computers.

But it's great to imagine that we're sliding toward a new age in geek retail ... an age built on the understanding that knowledge is a good thing, and that geeky spaces can become part of the social parklands of a city.

Andy Ihnatko writes on computer issues for the Sun-Times.