“You know, Iloosh, I know we have to, but I do not like it, waiting in line like this. Reminds me of Soyuz.”
That was something my father told me, grumpily, as we stood in a queue for a Trader Joe’s nearly 20 miles away from our house. It was the middle of March in 2020, and he had the bright idea of going up to Marin County, specifically San Rafael, to do our usual round of bi-weekly grocery shopping. The stores in our native San Francisco were overrun, not unlike the opening scenes of a disaster movie. Lines went around the block, if not multiple, and the great exodus of people fleeing to Hawaii, Tahoe, or cabins across the Midwest had not yet happened. The city was deeply congested, and the seams that barely held things together were coming undone, spurred on by panic and a natural fear of the unknown.
Why did we come to San Rafael? In my dad’s own words, the logic was simple: “Less people! Less time to wait in line. You know, I hate waiting in line, Iloosh.” My dad was jubilant, a man who hated waiting in general, something that came back to his time growing up in Soyuz, a casual Russian word describing the Soviet Union.
Back then, waiting in line was the norm, something that was to be expected throughout your life- unless you were an oligarch, or someone who didn’t mind dedicating their life to licking the boots of the Communist Party. (Which was, of course, a party that was often closely aligned with helping the interests of the oligarchs.) It was never as ridiculous as some may think, but it was a part of life. When I ask my parents why we came to the states in the 90’s, the explanation is what they describe as an escape from “two foul stenches”: one being the radiation from Chernobyl, the Ukrainian nuclear disaster a stones throw away from their town in Belarus, with the other being the rising anti-Semitism they felt spreading since the collapse of the Soyuz.
After many years in America however, I would venture to say that a third reason is, without a doubt, the fact that they, for the most part, no longer have to wait in line for most things.
This is, like much of our contemporary lives, a product of fierce globalization, mixed in with absurdist late-stage capitalism. (The absurdity coming from the now normalized ability to click on a bunch of pixels in a specific order and have a real life, tangible package appear at your door in 48 hours.) A higher standard of living has now been equated with how quickly we can attain consumer goods, as opposed to things like free universal healthcare, financial literacy, or even just a decent aperol spritz. (My personal bar to how livable a place is.)
We are used to getting things exceptionally quickly, and our waning attention span, thanks to things like hyper-bingeable content and short-form media platforms, is now smaller than ever. Things like Amazon Go were a logical next step in this direction, creating a physical space where you could simply walk in and walk out with what you needed, taking up the least amount of mental space possible. I would be lying if I said I did not sometimes rely on these platforms, or at the very least, engaged with them. It is often too easy not to use, and therein lies much of the problem.
But even in the face of all this, the line has persisted, past the forecasts and technological advancements of the modern era. Much of this was thanks to the coronavirus, where people descended onto physical outlets to secure goods in the unlikely event of a worst case scenario. This panic, mixed in with a long-ingrained American individualism (itself stemming from our nation’s long history of exceptionalism) created a return of the line as something anxious, an act of tension, two concepts that were almost exclusively products of the Soviet era.
However, the reason I wanted to write something about standing in line was because I slowly observed that it was, once again, changing its form. We are incredibly privileged here in the Bay Area to have people who trust science. It is, in many communities, not an easy sell. But in San Francisco alone, nearly 4 out of 5 people have been fully vaccinated.
Things are slowly starting to return, a city that was asleep for so long is now coming awake. The line too has returned, but it’s role is less utilitarian, and now, more leisurely. It’s became an extension of re-entering a culture, no matter how strange things may gotten in the last 18 months.
I love to stroll, which is just a fancy way of saying I enjoy walking around aimlessly while listening to Stereolab. On a recent stroll, I passed by the much loved, highly lauded Arsicault Bakery off Clement Street. It was the biggest line I had seen in a long time, perhaps since those mid-March days of last year. The people here were much cheerier however, and many of them were maskless. The queue went along half a block, no doubt from the lovely smell permeating from the bakery itself.
Right before I went off to college, I was seeing a girl who worked at Arsicault, mainly on weekends. Shy but extraordinarily warm, she would graciously bring me their famous croissants, and I would, annoyingly, tell her how much I understood of the latest Slavoj Zizek book I read. (It was, of course, very little.) After a while, I looked at her and I said, “You know, these are good, but I just can’t imagine waiting in that insane line for them.” She laughed, and said that the croissants were just fine. She preferred ones that came from a tiny spot in the Sunset, where they had a much deeper crunch, with a more subtle flavor to the dough.
When I inquired further, she said, “It’s not really about the croissants, I don’t think. People just want to feel like they’re doing something important. When you see a big line, you’re like, hey, there must be something good going on there.” I had remembered what she said because it blew my mind- people didn’t care about croissants! It was a contemporary example of a classic adage: the journey is its own reward. In the case of a 21st century San Francisco, this meant that standing in line was just as good, if not better, then whatever viral croissant people were going crazy for.
And I had to agree. My dad hated waiting in line, but I loved it. As an immigrant who dedicated his entire adult life to providing a decent life for my mother and I, he was very often at work, both day and night. He simply did not have time to wait in line, there were too many other things to be done.
But I cherish our time in line together, because it is time we just get to talk, usually with one arm around the other, in an awkward but funny half hug situation. It can go either way in line; we can be having a conversation that is almost Proustian; a stream of consciousness from a funny Soviet immigrant and his son, or we could be having an extremely serious discussion on oil dependence and the state of the European Union.
Or, it can go as it often does, and just turn into what we need to get for grandma and grandpa. “Okay, we cannot forget rye bread this time, Iloosh. Remember, rye bread!”
As if tradition, we forget the rye bread.
I do not mind. It just means we can come back tomorrow, and stand in line for a little while longer.
Standing in Line
Great post~~