David Lerner, RIP
David Lerner, a high school dropout and self-taught computer geek whose funky foothold in New York’s Flatiron district, Tekserve, was for decades a beloved discount mecca for Apple customers desperate to retrieve lost data and repair frozen hard drives, died on Nov. 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 72.
[…]
He and Mr. Demenus transformed a two-man operation in Mr. Demenus’s loft apartment into a business whose customers were as eclectic as the 200 or so employees who served them at makeshift help desks well before Apple formally established and branded “genius bars” in their stores.
[…]
During the nearly three decades before Tekserve shuttered its retail operations in 2016 — because of rising rents and competition from Apple’s stores — the sales and service outlet was where Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” raced when her PowerBook crashed. It was also the setting of Tamara Shopsin’s 2021 novel “LaserWriter II,” narrated by a 19-year-old newbie techie named Claire who works there.
Via Jason Snell:
Back in the day, when there were no Apple Stores, shops like Tekserve saved the bacon of Mac users on a regular basis. I never visited Tekserve, but it was legendary.
Previously:
