Want two words to prove the U.S. economy hasn’t totally bottomed yet?

 
BlackBerry Storm.
 
On a day when shares of Citigroup fell 20 percent by lunchtime and U.S. automakers’ odds of survival were dwindling, New York filmmaker Adrian Richards stood in line at a Verizon Wireless store in Midtown Manhattan for four hours for a chance to spend $199 on a new Storm the day it was released.
 
Why? “Basically,” he admits, “I don’t want to get it after everyone else.”
 
The Associated Press reported this morning that hundreds lined up for the new BlackBerry phone—a slick, touchscreen model that Research in Motion hopes will be a real competitor against the all-powerful iPhone from Apple.
 
Steven Amezquita, who emerged from the store victorious, holding a brown paper Verizon bag, got wide-eyed stares from the 30 people still waiting in line. He said he was excited to get to his job (no surprise, he’s an I.T. consultant) because he was “ready to rub it in everybody’s face.”
 
By 11:30 a.m., the 34th Street Verizon outpost was one of the few in the city to even still have the phone.
 
Further uptown, at the Verizon store on 57th Street, employees said a line had formed by 7 a.m., and the Storm was sold out by 9.
 
BlackBerry devotee Jules (she declined to give her last name) went Storm-chasing through New York City this morning. She checked out the display model at the 57th Street store and is planning on reserving one of the phones. It was the third Verizon store she’d visited without being able to actually buy one.
 
“I really think Verizon should have better measured the number of phones they would need,” she said.
 
Maybe executives at Verizon and Research in Motion have been watching the news, noticing rising unemployment numbers, freefalling financial markets, and plunging retail sales, and figured consumer demand wouldn’t reach this fevered pitch.
 
They may not have expected the masses to huddle for the storm, especially with the tenacity of filmmaker Richards, who finally got inside the Verizon store just before noon, hoping to get his hands on a Storm. “Hopefully,” he said.