Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

A BoomTown Bier-Trinken Visit to the Gourmet Haus Staudt, Home of iPhonegate! (Can You Say Oktoberfest in April?)

When BoomTown was kibitzing with SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg about where to meet up this week for a chat to catch up, we decided to forgo the obvious and instead choose the complete Silicon Valley cliche of the moment.

Destination: Redwood City and the now-infamous Gourmet Haus Staudt.

As in, the beer garden behind the German grocery store where the iPhone 4G prototype was snatched off a stool from a birthday-celebrating Apple (AAPL) engineer by person still unknown and sold to the now-police-shookdown Gizmodo gadget site.

In other words, just like going to the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) or Google (GOOG) garage, but fun and with German beer.

We chatted with a very delightful bartender, who filled us in a bit on the night–about the birthday party, about the funky place being popular with tech folk and about how most patrons believe the smartphone was stolen.

There is a lost-and-found behind the bar, he said, and pretty much everyone returns items left by ale-addled customers.

And, let me just say, if the conspiracy theory types who think Apple planned the whole thing saw this charming, but dowdy, joint, they’d think twice about some fiendish plot by CEO Steve Jobs.

This is a perfect place to lose an iPhone or anything else you can imagine.

In any case, we’ll see how it all plays out in the days ahead.

Until then, although no video was allowed, but here are some lovely snaps from my in-my-possession-despite-the-giant-glass-o-beer 3G iPhone to enjoy (click on the images to make them larger):

Unassuming Front:

Window With Gnome and German Hat-Wearing Lion (Also Beer, Natch!):

Dave Points Out the Obvious:

Dave and the Sign:

More Sign (Nine! No, 11! No, 13 German beers on tap!):

Stools of No Return:

Gemütlichkeit-filled Dave und Bier Nicht Mehr:

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