Joe Tenne packed his black Tundra truck full of camping supplies Wednesday night, said goodbye to his wife and son — and then headed to the Clarendon Apple store.
Tenne, 43, was first in line at the 2700 Clarendon Blvd. shop to buy the new iPhone 6. The Woodbridge resident, who got a tweet of support from William Shatner, arrived Wednesday at 8:00 p.m.
He was followed by hundreds of Apple fans who waited for the phones Friday morning.
“It’s a whole social experience, in addition to getting the phone,” Tenne, who runs an I.T. company, said minutes before the product went on sale.
The line at 8:00 a.m. snaked around the Market Common Clarendon complex, nearly reaching the Crate & Barrel store.
A photo of Tenne with a camp chair and cooler caught the eye of Shatner on Twitter Thursday afternoon.
“If you’re by the Clarendon Apple store & see this guy-bring him a coffee or offer to stand in for a bathroom break,” the actor tweeted.
Tenne said he used the restroom in the Apple store and at the nearby Starbucks, and ordered pizza with the second and third people in line — a couple from Alexandria who arrived at the store on Thursday at 11:00 p.m. Tenne, who has staked out the tech outpost for new products for the past three years, said he appreciated the sense of community.
“I’ve met all the store managers and made a lot of friends.”
Before 8:00 a.m., Apple employees ceremoniously removed black curtains from the shop windows, counted down the remaining seconds and then let a first set of customers rush inside.
Tenne bought the thin, fast iPhone and shook the hand of a staffer as he headed to his truck.
“See you next year,” she said.
Asked how he would spend the rest of the day, Tenne said he was headed back to Woodbridge.
“I’ll probably go home and play with it for 15 minutes and then go sleep for eight hours,” he said.