It’s with great sadness that I heard about the passing of Gary Allen this morning. I met Gary several times over the years and called and corresponded with him many times. He ran IFOAppleStore.com, by far the best website about Apple’s incredible chain of retail stores, a topic that proved a rich hunting ground, given its size, influence and global reach. Gary had an encyclopedic knowledge of Apple’s stores and his site — now sadly offline — was an incredible resource.

Gary was also known for traveling all over the word to attend store openings, often camping out the night before. He visited London, Paris, Tokyo, Istanbul, Beijing and many, many other cities. Some saw this as eccentric, but the point was not the store opening itself, but the chance to socialize with a bunch of like-minded people. To get some idea of his devotion to his hobby, check out his Twitter and Flickr feeds, still online and full of pictures from his travels.

I wrote a profile of Gary a few years ago that is now also offline, so I’m resurrecting it below.

Apple’s retail experiment isn’t just a rousing success, it’s an explosive engine that takes ever increasing numbers of staff members to keep under control. More and more people are getting jobs at their local Apple Stores… and Apple’s demanding more and more out of them if they want to keep their jobs.

To celebrate Apple Retail’s tenth anniversary, Gary Allen just drove 3,200 miles, crossed 12 states, and burned 100 gallons of gas.

His destination?

Four days before the iPad 2 goes on sale, the first line is already forming.

Apple fan Justin Wagoner has set up camp outside an Apple Store in Dallas, Texas. Here’s a snap of his tent taken by a MacCast reader.

Wagoner appears to be the first person lining up for the iPad 2, which goes on sale on Friday at 5PM. Apple isn’t taking preorders, so its first come, first served.

Wagoner also camped out to be first in line for the iPhone 4 last year. He has set up a site to document his camping trip: iJustinOfficial.com.