Cheap fashion finds it way to LA; teenyboppers everywhere rejoice

For anyone living in Southern California, you're no doubt aware that H&M is opening up its first west coast store today. I started noticing coverage early last week, and since then, all of the popular radio stations, blogs, and newspapers have covered the story. So have the unpopular ones.

I was living in New York when the first H&M opened in the United States, and while I didn't go on opening day, many of my colleagues did, and they came into work the next morning talking about how they waited on line (in line? I never remember) for two hours before finally being allowed into the store to spend their hard-earned money on clothes that would fall apart two washes later.

(I've already written my feelings on H&M. I just don't get it.)

The new store opened today only a few blocks from my office in Pasadena. When friends came in at 9 AM this morning, they reported a line around the block already - three hours before the noon opening. At ten to noon, when I heard helicoptors overhead, I went out to see for myself, and sure enough, there were hundreds of young women - who all oddly looked similar, despite the variety of races and hairstyles being represented - in a line snaked around the block and through and alley and over the river and through the woods.

I'll post the pictures here when I get home tonight. Even though, for me, seeing still isn't believing.