Meta to open Pop-Ups for Ray-Ban Display Glasses
Jay Peters reported for The Verge earlier this week Meta is planning to open pop-up shops in various locales over the next several weeks as a means to enable potential buyers to check out its recently-announced Ray-Ban glasses with a display. The $799 wearable, which Meta announced last week and slated to be released on September 30, is the most ambitious of an ever-expanding line of connected eyewear for the company.
“Meta is just about to launch its impressive smart glasses with a display, and to give more people a chance to try them out and see its other smart glasses and VR hardware, the company is going to open new shops starting in October,” Peters wrote Wednesday. "New Meta Lab pop-up shops will be located in Las Vegas and New York, and and its Los Angeles Meta Lab location, which opened as a pop-up last year, will return as Meta’s flagship store. Meta’s Bay Area shop in Burlingame, California, remains open, too.”
According to Peters, Meta is opening its pop-ups to the general public in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York City. The Vegas location opens at the Wynn Las Vegas on October 16, with the Melrose Avenue location in LA on October 24. The NYC spot on Fifth Avenue, in Midtown Manhattan, is scheduled to open a little later, on November 13.
Anyone interested in the display-equipped Ray-Bans can book demo time with Meta.
I felt covering Peters’ story was apropos given my feature this week on Lucyd’s glasses. Like Apple Vision Pro early last year, I can’t help but feel a slight tinge of FOMO seeing reporter pals such as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman share initial impressions of Meta’s Ray-Bans with a display; the reason isn’t jealousy, but rather deep curiosity of accessibility. At a high level, Meta’s new Ray-Bans hold more personal appeal than the Lucyd pair I reviewed precisely because the Ray-Bans have a screen. Moreover, while I’m simultaneously not itching to get a pair because I’m not as invested in Meta’s ecosystem as I am Apple’s, the nerdy journalist in me is nevertheless damn intrigued by what Meta has built—particularly its wristband controller thing. Indeed, it’s moments like this—mainstream media types like Gurman getting hands-on (face-on?) time with Meta’s glasses before writing about it—that underscore my ardent belief that disability should have a more prominent place setting at the proverbial table of mainstream media coverage. At the very least, it should be obvious to the powers-that-be who run newsrooms that disabled people pay attention to the news as much as anyone else.
