Greetings, and welcome back to another exciting episode of As the Emeryville Turns! Yeah, yeah, we know... there's been an awfully high ratio of stuff about the (allegedly) imminent grand opening of the Apple Store Bay Street floating around here lately, but what the heck-- at least it's a continuing plot thread. Things are kinda slow lately, and we're thankful for what we can get. (We figure we'll hold off on renaming the show, though, until we broadcast another three consecutive episodes with Emeryville scenes in them.)

To recap: last week we noted that Apple had officially bumped the Emeryville store into the Neato-Keen Coming Soon box on its retail page, complete with a November 16th grand opening date. But then yesterday we had to report that the November 16th tag had been mysteriously replaced with one of the most reviled phrases in the high-tech universe: "Coming Soon." Always ones to oblige, we offered up all sorts of extremely plausible suggestions for reasons for the delay, but it seems that all you folks out there in TV Land inexplicably favor educated theories based on established facts to random swirling speculation based on nothing in particular. Weirdos.

But never let it be said that we don't give the audience what it wants. We heard from Bay Area faithful viewers Don Carlile, Bruce, JoshOgle, and scads of others that the Apple Store Bay Street is located in the Bay Street Mall, which isn't actually open to the public yet-- and if we had to offer an educated theory based on established facts as to why, well, the fact that said mall is currently still apparently very much under construction might have a teensy little something to do with it.

Selected excerpts from eyewitness accounts: "Very wet construction site"; "huge blob of steel and wood and whatever"; "lots of mud"; "surrounded by fences"; "doesn't even have interior walls yet"; "road leading to the Apple store is blocked with a big fence"; "smoking hole in the ground filled with quicksand and pit vipers with little life vests." Okay, we may have added that last one ourselves, but you get the picture. Indeed, by all accounts, Apple was totally on track and ready to Unleash the Dogs of Retail this Saturday, and wasn't terribly pleased at the prospect of having to wait for the mall itself to play catch-up.

But it seems that Apple has chosen the path of Blinding Optimism; faithful viewer Dan Young notes that the Bay Street "Coming Soon" has once again changed back into a date: November 23rd, to be exact, which (if it's not just a pipe dream) is still in time to get the store running full-force before Thanksgiving and the insane holiday shopping crunch that immediately follows. So that's the latest, Bay Area partygoers; update your copies of iCal appropriately, and enjoy the grand opening-- provided you're not going to be out of town for Turkey Day already like poor ol' Dan. Somebody snag him an extra t-shirt.