Life’s Too Short to be a “Midiot”
Not being a New Yorker, I’ve had to watch “Cronut mania” from afar. And after watching for the last week or so, I still don’t get it.
Jay Leno pretty much summed it up with this (rather lame) joke:
I’m not a Leno fan, but “midiots” seems about right.
“Cronuts” are the brain child of New York City pastry chef Dominique Ansel. As Leno says, it’s a cross between a doughnut and a croissant. Ansel’s bakery makes only 250 per day, which means they’re relatively rare.
Now, most people I know would say, “so what?” and get on with their lives. But according to Agence France Presse, there’s a substantial number of New Yorkers who feel otherwise…
“Just behind Amaral in the queue stood Steven Go, a chef who arrived from his home in Staten Island shortly after 5:00 am, at the behest of his wife. Justin Gorder, a 30-year-old salesman, travelled an hour from New Jersey.
Irvin, a trader, bashfully admitted he should already be at work. Gina, meanwhile, arrived in a taxi at 6:30 am, clutching her four-month-old baby.
To satisfy the largest possible number of customers, patrons are restricted to two cronuts each. At first, customers could snaffle six at a time, but Ansel restricted it to two after discovering the cronuts he sold for $5 each were changing hands on the Internet at up to $50 a piece.
At 8:00 am, the wait was over. Ansel flung open the doors and welcomed his first customers. By 8:56, almost all of the approximately 250 to 300 cronuts available have been sold. A bakery employee distributed madeleine pastries, advising people who arrived at 7:00 am they had a “40 percent” chance of satisfying their craving.
By 9:05 am, Ansel broke the bad news to those outside his shop who have missed out. “We are sold out for today,” he said.
Inside, around 20 people waited anxiously to snap up the final cronuts on sale. A crafty customer offered to sell his place in the queue for $100. His offer was accepted by two friends who delightedly came away with two cronuts each.”
Yes, people are actually waiting in line for up to 2 – 3 hours to get one of these things (click here for a crowd shot). It’s gotten so bad that some New Yorkers are actually hiring line-sitters to purchase Cronuts for them:
“That’s opened the door to industrious entrepreneurs who see plenty of dough to be made, camping out at the bakery hours in advance and then charging up to $50 per cronut (a 900 percent markup).
“If they’re willing, we’re able,” says Tawny, a 27-year-old data analyst who was recently laid off and declined to give her last name for fear of losing her new lucrative gig as a cronut line-waiter.
She and her friend Janet, a grad student at UC Berkeley in town for the summer, each charge $70 for two cronuts. (There’s an additional $10 surcharge for deliveries outside of Manhattan.)
Their new gig entails a 5:45 a.m. wake-up time, a 20-minute subway commute costing $5 round-trip, a 90-minute wait for the goods and, of course, the schlep to the client’s meeting place of choice, occasionally in far-flung locations.”
LOL. Even if you could prove to me that Cronuts were the most amazing pastries ever invented, you still couldn’t convince me to stand in line for 2+ hours – let alone pay a “line sitter” or scalper 10x – 20x what the thing is worth – to get one. I like good food, but life’s too short to be a “midiot,” IMHO.
June 26, 2013
You have got to be kidding me! People stand in line that long, and are willing to pay that much for a pastry.
I can’t think of anything I would stand in line that long for. Most of all not a pastry.
June 27, 2013
Nutty, isn’t it? Although I’ve never been big on either doughnuts or croissants, I’m willing to grant that Cronuts are tasty. But so are a whole lot of other things that I don’t have to wait in a long line – or pay ridiculous prices – for. So who needs ’em?
June 28, 2013
I’m sure no one NEEDS them. It’s just a matter of want, as always>\.