When we finally made it to Midtown last week to check out the new underground Apple store, we were shut out from the 24-hour cube of tech design goodness by a private General Motors party. We cursed that cash bleeding Detroit outfit before ducking our tail between our legs and moving on. But perhaps it was for the best — as the folks trapped in the store's elevator can attest.

This last thursday- may 26th 2006 I was in New York city on a school trip. After going to a 8:00 show on broadway we decided to go see the brand spankin new "Apple Store"; so we walked down to fifth avenue and went in. it was a novelty, we stayed in the store for around 20 minutes. I took the elevator down because it was so cool. When we left me and 5 other members of my group went up in the asome glass elevator, when we got to the street level i got out of the elevator, AND THE DOOR CLOSED BEHIND ME!!- theres two diffrent doors an inner and outer door but curved glass for the round elevator, the exterior wouldn't open but the inner door kept on opening and closing. [...]

Now this was kind of fun because the elevator was glass and they we're panicing- they were dancing. but it was easy to take picures of them stuck- i took the picure above outside of the building through the glass wall + the elevator. The employees here were up on a stepstool looking for a fix, later they used the ladder and the open roof of the tube[the elevator car did have a roof though] and sneaked water bottles down though the opening and closing inner door to my friends stuck inside.

They finaly had to call the NYPD to get my comrades out of the elevator, by the time the NYPD go there they started to leak the hydralic lines to lower the elevator to the lower floor, and the wonderfull NYPD was rushing down the stairs with equipment to pry the door open, when the elevator got even with the lower floor the doors started to open and the police fully opened and held them open. The elevator was still going down to the basement floor, they the last person got out it was a good 2 foot step up. and two people burned there hands badly enough for them to blister on the hot lights in the shaft.

That MacBook firmware PR fiasco suddenly doesn't look so bad.

Stuck At Apple [TNTO, via Engadget]