Lines for pastries, phones, even paying respects have become famous. What is it that draws people to spend their scarce, precious time in queues?
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I have waited in line for a Lune croissant. At the worst possible time, too – mid-morning on a Sunday, the queue stretching out the door of the vaunted bakery’s Fitzroy warehouse and curling around the corner. This is an embarrassing admission for someone wary of falling for hype.
The line, which on countless other occasions I have smugly strode past, took 45 minutes from joining to counter. With friends from out of town, I joined grumpily, unconvinced that the pastries – expensive, if delicious – would be worth the wait. At the end of the line, with nary a sheet of laminated dough in sight, for a moment it didn’t seem too late to leave. But soon we were hemmed in from behind by groups of tourists, parents with fidgety children, bored couples thumbing their phones. In Sydney this week, people queued for hours, from before first light, to be at the top of the queue when Lune opened its new flagship store. Unlike those poor sods who waited in the rain, we baked under full summer sun. All of us waiting, squinting and sweaty, for a supposedly better version of something we could get nearly anywhere else.
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