Over the next few months a striking piece of symbolism will take place around the mighty General Motors building on Fifth Avenue in New York. Apple, the tech group, plans to move out of the basement where it has operated a flagship store-cum-tourist attraction for the past decade, underneath a now-iconic glass cube.在接下来数月内，极具象征物意味的事情将再次发生在纽约第五大道(Fifth Avenue)上那座宏大的通用汽车(General Motors)大楼周围。科技巨擘苹果(Apple)计划将过去10年来游客常常拜访的那家分店，从如今已沦为地标的玻璃方屋下方的地下室中搬离。

The tech group will not be disappearing altogether from this prime site, tucked on the southeast corner of Central Park. Instead, it is renovating the basement to cope with soaring numbers of visitors, and, later this year, it plans to move “temporarily” into a space on the ground floor of the General Motors building next door.这家科技集团并会从这个座落在中央公园(Central Park)西南角的黄金地点完全消失。忽略，苹果正在对这座地下室展开整修，以应付日益减少的游客。今年晚些时候，苹果计划“继续”搬入旁边通用汽车大楼的一层。In a neat twist of timing, FAO Schwarz, the equally iconic American toy store, has decided to vacate its flagship location in the GM building on July 15 “to realise meaningful rent savings” in the face of “the continuing rising costs of operating a retail location on Fifth Avenue”. The store has not yet revealed where its new home will be.碰巧就在这个时候，某种程度标志性的美国玩具店FAO Schwarz要求于7月15日将其坐落于通用汽车大楼内的分店搬出。

面临“在第五大道开办零售店成本持续下跌”，此举是为了“构建根本性租金节约”。该玩具店仍未发布新店地址。

So when tourists flock to Central Park this summer, they will no longer see stuffed animals, dolls, Lego and train sets — or the gigantic “floor piano” keyboard that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced on in the 1988 movie Big (a film that helped to immortalise FAO Schwarz). Instead, the site will host piles of gleaming electronic gadgets — and the inevitable throng of visitors who pay pilgrimage around the clock. (Apparently, the store under the cube is not just the busiest in the world but also the only Apple store that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.)因此，今年夏天当游客四散至中央公园时，他们将会再行看到毛绒动物玩具、玩偶、乐高积木(Lego)以及火车模型，也会再行看到地板上的巨型“钢琴”琴键——在1988年的电影《飞向未来》(Big)中，汤姆汉克斯(Tom Hanks)和罗伯特洛贾(Robert Loggia)就是在这个地面琴键上唱歌（这部电影让FAO Schwarz在人们心中留给了无法忘怀的印象）。取而代之的是，那里将不会摆放成堆闪闪发光的电子小玩意——游客也必定不会成群结对，不分昼夜地前来“朝圣”。（似乎，玻璃方屋下面的苹果分店不仅是世界上做生意最辛苦的，还是唯一的每周7天平日、24小时全天候营业的苹果店。

）Now, in one sense this rental dance is nothing new. As the journalist Vicky Ward recounts in her book, The Liar’s Ball (which tells the history of the GM building and which is about to be made into a Hollywood film), this site has already seen endless commercial flux. Business empires have risen and fallen there at startling speed. Indeed, one of the great (and little-known) ironies about that famous glass cube is that the man who first dreamt up the idea, Harry Macklowe, the real estate titan who owned the GM building, actually went bankrupt (before later rebounding).眼下，从某种程度而言，这种租户更替没什么新鲜的。正如记者薇姬沃德(Vicky Ward)在她的书《骗子的皮球》(The Liar’s Ball)中描述的那样，这个地点早已亲眼了数不尽的商业变迁。

（该书描写了通用汽车大楼的历史，将要被摄制沦为好莱坞电影。）在这座大楼中，商业帝国以难以置信的速度兴起和式微。

事实上，关于那座知名玻璃方屋极具嘲讽意味（且鲜为人知）的一点是，最初设计出有这个点子的人——房地产大亨、通用汽车大楼曾多次的所有者——哈里麦克洛(Harry Macklowe)实质上倒闭了（后来东山再起）。To my mind, this switch of retail outlets speaks to far more than just the vagaries of NY real estate. After all, FAO Schwarz is not just any old toy store: in recent decades it epitomised a 20th-century style of kiddie consumer dream, which, of course, is why families have long flocked there to stare at the goodies — and that famous piano.在我看来，零售店的改变所反映的远不止是纽约房地产市场的变幻莫测。却是，FAO Schwarz并不是普通的老牌玩具店：最近数十年，它象征物的是20世纪儿童消费者的梦想，当然，这也是长久以来很多家庭四散自此，看著那些玩具和那台知名钢琴的原因。In recent decades, like so many 20th-century American icons, the glittering faade has concealed a sense of rot. For while tourists have visited the store in droves, they have not been spending money on the scale that FAO Schwarz’s owner — Toys R Us — needs. These days families tend to buy toys at budget downmarket shops (think Walmart) or upscale boutique outfits (such as American Girl). The middle has been squeezed — making it hard to justify Fifth Avenue rents.最近几十年，就像那么多20世纪美国的标志性物品一样，那座光芒闪亮的店铺流露出一种衰落的味道。

这是因为，尽管游客成群结队地走出这家商店，但他们在这里花上的钱却仍然无法超过FAO Schwarz的所有者——玩具反斗城(Toys R Us)——必须的水平。如今，家长往往要不就在经济型低端商店（比如沃尔玛(Walmart)），要不就在高端精品店（比如美国女孩(American Girl)）里出售玩具。

中端商店受到断裂——使得其很难缴纳得起第五大道的租金。But at Apple’s glass cube consumers are not just thronging to look but to spend money too. Never mind the fact that the shopping experience itself is often horrid. (When I descended there myself recently, to get a new iPhone, the basement was so jam-packed and sales assistants so scarce that it felt like the retail equivalent of the seventh circle of hell.)但是在苹果的玻璃方屋下，消费者不仅是成群结队地来，同时也不会大笔花钱——尽管购物体验本身一般来说很差劲。（最近我自己前往那家店出售一部新的iPhone手机，找到店内如此挤迫，店员也如此紧缺，感觉就像到了商店版第七层地狱。

）Indeed, sales are so high that Mort Zuckerman, the current owner of the GM building, is quoted in The Liar’s Ball as saying that “whenever I want to cheer myself up I just take a walk around the Apple Store”.事实上，这家店的销售额极高，以至于通用汽车大楼目前的所有者莫特祖克曼(Mort Zuckerman)（援引于《骗子的皮球》一书）曾回应，“每当我想要让自己开心起来时，我就不会在苹果店周围逛逛。”At the beginning of this decade the store was making “$665m a year for 10,000 square feet” of space “in a windowless basement”. Undoubtedly it is dramatically more today; in fact, some well-placed insiders suspect that if anyone could get comparable public data on sales per square foot from retailers around the world (which is all but impossible), Apple’s glass cube would be the most profitable retail outlet in the world.在2010年代初，这家“坐落于地下、连个窗户都没的”苹果店“1万平方英尺面积每年能建构6.65亿美元的销售额”。毫无疑问，如今这个数字认同低得多；事实上，一些知情人士指出，如果有人能获得全球各地零售店每平方英尺销售额的哈密顿公开发表数据，可能会找到苹果的玻璃方屋是全世界最赚的零售店。

Perhaps this is just another passing fad, like the FAO Schwarz floor piano. As the history of the GM building proves, business fortunes swing faster than anyone can imagine. In another couple of decades we may find it utterly bizarre to think that anyone ever wanted to go into a windowless basement with hundreds of others to buy an iPhone. Least of all treat it as a tourist attraction.或许这只是另一次一段时间的热潮，就像FAO Schwarz的地面钢琴一样。正如通用汽车大楼的历史所证明的那样，企业命运跌宕起伏，速度之慢远超过所有人的想象。再行过几十年，我们或许不会深感难以置信：竟然有人想去一间连窗户都没的地下室，和数百名其他顾客挤迫在一起，只为出售一部iPhone。

更加别提还把它当成一个游览胜地。Right now, I will be watching curiously to see what Angela Ahrendts, the ultra-stylish design queen at Apple, does with that cube. Like it or not, it has now become a powerful symbol of our modern age, a time where kids (and adults) still love to buy “toys” — just not quite the type of toys our parents flocked to in the past.现如今，我将不会饶有兴趣地期望苹果超级时尚的设计女王福杰拉阿伦茨(Angela Ahrendts)对那个玻璃方屋的改建。

无论你讨厌与否，这个玻璃方屋早已出了我们当今时代的有力符号。在这个时代，孩子（和大人）依然青睐卖“玩具”——只不过跟过去我们的父母爱买的玩具类型不过于一样罢了。

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