I've been pondering the same exact thing (almost started a new thread, glad I looked to find yours)... Also, there are about 3 stores in my current immediate radius. The two closest are Palo Alto and Stanford - I've wondered which one would stand to be the best odds...
I had the stupid "were updating the store" splash screen on two separate devices until 12 minutes after everything started (despite constant cache clearing, reloading, browser restarting...). I had almost gotten to the point that I believed Apple might have flaked. Meh...