Snapchat shades take over Big Apple
High-tech eyewear records 10-second videos, wirelessly sends them to the app
NEW YORK— New Yorkers have been known to queue up for many a hotticket item: dinner reservations, iPhones, Cronuts.
On Monday, Snapchat Spectacles joined that list as hundreds of people lined up for a chance to buy the eyewear. And after six hours of waiting — first in the wintry cold, and then in a sparsely decorated pop-up store off Fifth Avenue — I finally claimed mine.
First, a primer. Spectacles are sunglasses with embedded cameras that Snapchat introduced two months ago with the aim of funnelling ever more videos to its service. The $130 (U.S.) eyewear records10-second videos and then wirelessly sends them to the user’s Snapchat app.
As Snapchat’s parent, Snap Inc., is preparing to go public early next year, the company is betting that it can increase the amount of disappearing video content that parades on its burgeoning platform. Spectacles, if they become a hit, could help bolster that goal.
It’s too early to say whether the trendy sunglasses will succeed at that. But it’s no joke to say that they have quickly drawn a following in Manhattan.
Snapchat has kept the locations of its Spectacles pop-up stores secret — they’ve appeared in the Los Angeles area; at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.; in Tulsa, Okla. and even the Grand Canyon — but a pop-up in Midtown Manhattan by the glass-cubed Apple Store was sure to grab attention.
Inspired by an editor’s Twitter post about the pop-up, I headed over and arrived around 8:30 a.m. Within minutes, more and more people arrived, braving the late November cold and flurries.
By 9:30 a.m., Snapchat employees had handed out wristbands to some of those in line, demarcating who was assured an opportunity to buy up to two pairs of Spectacles. I received the second-to-last bracelet.
By about 12:30 p.m., the last of us were ushered into the pop-up space, which had once housed the restaurant and café Bottega del Vino. Once warmly decorated, it was now rendered stark white, with brick walls and an exposed industrial ceiling.
Around 1:15 p.m., the store’s white blinds began to descend, slowly closing off the view of the store from the crowd on 59th Street. Perhaps it was to prevent the appearance of pictures of a half-empty boutique.
Just before 3 p.m., my turn at the Snapbot finally came up. The vending machine has three giant buttons representing the colours of Spectacles, with a round screen kitted out with Snapchat’s famed lens technology, virtually placing a pair of the glasses on my face as I made my decision.
Within five minutes, and after two swipes of my card, I walked away with two pairs, one black and one blue.
Snapchat employees cheered at the end of their 10-hour workday. The minimalist store would be cleaned up and prepared for the crowds that would surely be lined up when it reopened Tuesday afternoon.