At 12:30pm today, I was walking in the rain in Midtown New York City on my way to a meeting, when I came upon an odd sight. I found at least 500 people standing in a long and winding line in a park — in the rain — waiting for food!
At first, I thought maybe this was some kind of crisis food line for the homeless and the genuinely hungry — but when I took out my camera and began to follow the line to the beginning, I was shocked to see all these New Yorkers were standing around just to get a hamburger at the Madison Square Park Shake Shack!
Behold the mother ship! Shake Shack was born from a hot dog cart in Madison Square Park created by Union Square Hospitality Group to support the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s first art installation “I ♥ Taxi.” The cart was a success and lines formed daily, so we re-opened for an additional two summers in 2002 and 2003.
See that wild line for yourself! Here’s my video:
I find it sort of sad that people would pay $8 for a double burger and stand in line for three hours just to take a bite of beef.
Do those good people really have nothing else better to do with their day than wait in a perpetual queue?