Buddy Valastro, and his family, run Carlo’s bakery in Hoboken at 95 Washington Street. Buddy is also the star of the television series — “Cake Boss” — on TLC, and that means Carlo’s Bakery is the hottest tourist spot in New Jersey and here is unequivocal proof:
Janna was in Hoboken yesterday doing some Vegan grocery shopping for us when she happened upon Carlo’s Bakery. We enjoy watching “Cake Boss” and we always wondered if starring on a TLC show translated into more cupcake and cookie sales. We now have Panopticonic, photographic, evidence that TLC is a kingmaker when it comes to selling sugar.
In the image below, people, for some reason, pose in front of Carlo’s to take a photograph.
Are these poseurs memorializing the moment for free without having to buy a sugary treat?
Or are they just giant Buddy fans?
Turning left, Janna took another image — this one shows the head of the Cake Boss queue as it stretches down a whole city block.
Notice the “Home of the Cake Boss” banner on the Hoboken-owned streetlamp? City promotion at it’s best: Hoboken knows which side of the sheet cake its revenue stream is buttercreamed.
See the CVS Pharmacy in the distance? Keep that in mind as we continue our tour of the line.
Further on down the line — you can see the line is growing longer by the minute and steel barricades keep the people moving in place as they wait to feed their sugar addiction.
Just a few minutes later, more people join the queue and pack the line for Carlo’s Bakery.
I wonder if other businesses in Hoboken get some of Carlo’s runoff if folks get tired of standing in a never-ending queue for a slice of pie?
Remember when I asked you earlier to remember the CVS Pharmacy? Well, here it is, featuring the queue for Carlo’s Bakery!
This line is actually across the street from the bakery block, and a person with a communication radio stands at the corner to safely move people across the busy street from the “CVS Pharmacy Carlo’s Line” to the end of the “Real Carlo’s Bakery Queue.”
I would estimate if you were at the end of the CVS line for Carlo’s Bakery, your wait time to get in the store would be at least five hours. The bakery is incredibly small and crowded and only a few people at a time can be served by their tiny, family, staff.
Would you wait in a five hour line for a cookie?
Would you wait longer than five minutes to leap in front of Carlo’s to have your picture took so you could say you “saw Buddy” without actually entering the store or spending any money?
I am fascinated by fame and celebrity in America, and how willingly people give up their lives to viscerally glow in the celebrated light of others; and I am calcified by the very idea that people would care to spend longer than a glance at anything in Hoboken.
If you want to measure the power of television on the minds of the middling masses, look no further than 95 Washington Street, and be prepared to confess the demise of the American Dream as the unwashed wait in a queue that will never end just to — perhaps and just maybe — taste a sweet in person that they have been longing to bite, chew and swallow from afar.
Oh, if we only had the same demonstrated patience and dedicated appetite for educational advancement in America — we would finally be one incredible country to reckon with again in the arena of nations — instead of just jolly imbeciles peeling the fondant from our bloated cheeks and wiping the confectioner’s sugar from the corner of our mouths.