From the roof of her apartment building, Sophie Frere watches a mania unfold daily.
Some say it’s a kind of mass hypnosis. Others say it’s a rare example of justified hype.
Two months ago, she moved to Chicago and found herself living at the edge of Wicker Park, across the street from the uber-popular Filipino restaurant Kasama. She noticed the line out front and asked a neighbor what exactly she was looking at. A line, yes. But every day? For hours? A line that runs down Augusta Boulevard and curls around the next block?
“And he said, ‘Oh, that’s a Michelin-starred something, something,’ and I said, ‘But there are so many good places to eat in Chicago?’ And this line is, like, every day, every day, every day, every day. Now I’m thinking, ‘Well, I have to report to my friends.’ My friends in the UK, they all go: ‘Ridiculous!’ And my friends in San Diego, they go: ‘Oh my gosh! I have to try it!’ I don’t know where I land. But it’s interesting, the way we spend our time.”
And so Frere — who was born in San Diego but has the posh accent of her London childhood — created @kasamahowwefeelin, a TikTok account dedicated to documenting the daily queue outside Kasama. And almost immediately, her videos were being watched by hundreds of thousands. Her second video was watched more than 200,000 times. Now she gets between 600,000 and 700,000 views for every video, which might suggest these are exciting videos. They are not. For sheer inactivity, Frere’s videos of the Kasama line — recorded daily from the roof of her apartment — rival Andy Warhol’s immobile experimental films of the Empire State Building standing and a man sleeping.
“One time I live-streamed the line and there were 700 people online watching for a good while. I’m thinking, what are you bozos watching? You are literally staring at a queue!”
Another time, she made a joke about hiring DJs to serenade the line, and received around 300 DMs from DJs offering to do exactly that; she got so many offers that she hired a handful of DJs to actually play for the line, on Sept. 27, from 9:30 am to 2 p.m.
Frere holds more than a passing fascination here: Until recently, she lived in California and worked for tech companies on AI integration and consumer behavior. After she tired of the corporate tech culture, the Stanford grad moved to Chicago to study law at Northwestern, or perhaps psychology; she’s not certain yet. “I do think a lot these days about how lines work, and how everyone on that line has a story.” All day she overhears their conversations from the line. There are the tourists, the families, the young couples, the hipsters. The cousin who’s been cheating on a girlfriend with another cousin. The loud men who say nothing at all. The people who complain about the two-hour line that they are currently standing in, just so they can try Kasama’s viral breakfast sandwich.
“Sometimes I walk over and ask people what they got and how it was and was it worth it, and they say, always, yes. And I wonder if they’re saying that to justify the wait or if it’s that good. Actually, they say it’s ‘amazing.’ Always ‘amazing.’ What a terrible word. I look at the comments on TikTok — the post-clarity, so to speak — and a lot say ‘Mid,’ or ‘Not that great.’ And I wonder, are people less willing to tell the truth when they’re in front of live people? I do know Americans value experiences. And the European take is, well, they have something better to do. Do they? I mean, you’re all just drinking tea all day.”
To be fair, Europeans probably invented the orderly line, or queue.
One of the earliest recorded instances of a line forming was in a small village in 14th-century England, where it was decreed that anyone who wanted water for their vessel had to wait their turn, regardless of their social class. (And if you cut in line, except to be fined.) According to David Andrews’ insightful 2015 book, “Why Does the Other Line Always Move Faster: The Myths and Misery, Secrets and Psychology of Waiting in Line,” the practice of standing in a line for anything at all wasn’t commonly observed until the 19th century. If you wanted something, you jostled for it. The earliest dictionaries didn’t even identify a “line” or “queue” (which initially meant “tail”) as a thing to stand in. Then in 1837, Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, in his book “The French Revolution: A History,” noted how unusual it was to witness starving Parisians patiently waiting in line for bread: “That talent of spontaneously standing in queue distinguishes the French people…”
Oui, oui, blame the French.
For the line at the post office during holidays. The line to get through tunnels at Soldier Field. The line of traffic from O’Hare to the Loop — itself preceded by interminable lines that snake through the airport itself, conducted infamously by the surliest of TSA agents.
Since it opened in 2020, the line at Kasama, though, has been a different animal, closer to a form of social currency or rite of passage than a hassle. Not long ago, Chicagoans were waiting in line for word-of-mouth-do-not-miss doughnuts and cupcakes. TikTok and Instagram have since weaponized that fear of missing out. Now we have lines at bakeries for bagels, croissants, brioche, at Fat Peach Bakery and Del Sur Bakery and Sugar Moon Bakery and Guillotine Bakery and Beachwater Bagels. As Saturday Night Live recently described their own line-standing problem, we want our “big dumb lines.”
A herd mentality, or a heard mentality, take your pick.
Frere waits in the Kasama line, too. “I am no better,” she says. In fact, she wonders if she makes it worse: “When I started the videos, I joked I was showing (the line) to discourage people, so I can walk over anytime for a breakfast sandwich. I think I add to it now.” She routinely witnesses near-misses between line standers and bicyclists, people getting dropped off by Uber and impatient motorists circling the gridlock. On Mondays and Tuesdays, when Kasama is closed, she occasionally notices a line form mistakenly.
She looks over her patio wall and waves at the line. No one waves back.
“D−−−−−bags,” she says.
“Sometimes when I want to sleep in, I have to remind myself that this isn’t a full-time job,” she laughs. “Still, I’m getting DMs all the time from people who just want to know what the lines looks like and, yeah, I can’t help it, I’ll snap a picture and send it to them.
“Really, at this point, I’m doing community service.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
