![\"Queueing](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/09672d41e5def2c2c115902a3134cd38e7c982c1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n New York (AFP) \u2013 In front of L’industrie Pizzeria, as at many other New York restaurants and shops, customers line up behind barriers — in this case, all to grab a prized pizza slice. <\/p>\n
Issued on: 06\/06\/2026 – 05:22<\/p>\n
2 min Reading time\n<\/p>\n
Not everyone in America’s biggest city finds standing in line to be a chore. The power of social media trends means that for some, waiting for hours is an attraction in itself.<\/p>\n
“It’s gotten pretty crazy in the city recently,” food influencer Ali Chilton, who has 168,000 followers on Instagram, told AFP. <\/p>\n
“Some would blame me for the lines at some of those places,” the 31-year-old said, citing a craze for hot chocolates at dessert shop Glace after a video she posted in 2023 racked up tens of millions of views.<\/p>\n
People can queue overnight in New York if needed, as happened last year when punters sought to bag free tickets for a play starring Lupita Nyong’o and Peter Dinklage in Central Park. <\/p>\n
Isabella Downes, who lately waited 40 minutes outside a Manhattan deli, said she was drawn to the idea of “participating in something trendy and fun.”<\/p>\n
She was queueing to try out Dot Cakes, small frosted cakes with multicolored sprinkles that went viral and sell for $11 apiece.<\/p>\n
In a “polarizing” world, she said, “being collectively together over one thing, and it’s usually a pretty happy and excited environment, that can be really nice too.”<\/p>\n
Line sitters<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Queueing has become more prevalent since the Covid-19 pandemic \u00a9 TIMOTHY A. CLARY \/ AFP\/File <\/p>\n
For the impatient, a new tool has recently become available: the website “Damn Lines” estimates waiting times in real time using cameras installed in nearby homes, in exchange for payment.<\/p>\n
Or you can hire a line sitter to wait in your place. <\/p>\n
One firm, Same Ole Line Dudes, says its workers are in at least two separate queues on any given day. <\/p>\n
They charge clients $25 an hour for the privilege of sparing them the boredom of waiting. At courts, where media outlets often use line sitters to get a seat for high-profile cases, the rate rises to $50 an hour. <\/p>\n
Robert Samuel, the company’s founder, said that customers include businesses who may hire sitters to create a queue — enticing others to join it. <\/p>\n
“I can’t say the name, but we’ve had a few companies that have hired my line sitters as posers to wait outside their establishments,” he told AFP. <\/p>\n
‘Social ritual’<\/p>\n
Roberto Casati, a French-Italian philosopher, pointed to a deeper sense of meaning for people who join long queues like those in New York. <\/p>\n
“A social ritual is being created around the line,” Casati, a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, told AFP. <\/p>\n
These moments become “shareable,” “Instagrammable” experiences — and therefore more “acceptable” than waiting at the supermarket, he added. <\/p>\n
Samuel Abrams, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York state, said that queuing was about “status.”<\/p>\n
“To wait at the right place signals taste, knowledge, and stamina,” he wrote in a piece for specialist website NewGeography.com.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon can, however, create tensions. <\/p>\n
In 2024, the hugely popular bagel chain Apollo ended up in court with the owner of a building over its long lines blocking neighboring tenants’ entrances.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York (AFP) \u2013 In front of L’industrie Pizzeria, as at many other New York restaurants and shops,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-257374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}