New Yorkers in the past decade or so have become masters at waiting on long lines. We'll wait on line for food, for phones, for opera tickets, for TV show screenings, even to look (and just look) at clothing. How serious do we take our lines? So seriously that New Yorkers have been known to literally cut line cutters. Luckily (we guess), when Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show sent a reporter out to cut some food cart lines in midtown that didn't happen. But it still led to some humorous moments: more ›

Wall Street Occupiers weren't the only ones staying up last night—Apple fans across the city were up in the rain, too, excitedly counting down the minutes until the official release of the new iPhone 4S at 8 a.m. this morning. more ›

Last week, we reported that Long Island City destination diner M. Wells will be closing at the end of the month due to a lease dispute with the landlord, and now, desperate customers with deep pockets are flooding the restaurant for a last-minute taste of glory. more ›

Lady Gaga will be at Best Buy in Union Square on Monday night, so if you aren't one of her "monsters" then you may want to avoid the area completely until Tuesday. Currently her army of followers are camped outside of Rockefeller Center attempting to get stand-by tickets to SNL, which she'll be performing on tomorrow night. The fans have been camped out since Tuesday (related: it has been raining since Tuesday!), and at one point Gaga sent over pizzas to keep them nourished. One hopeful gal told the Daily News, "We are SNL fans and Lady Gaga is our idol. This is the perfect episode." What, no props for Justin Timberlake? more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] On Sunday MeanRed Productions, which has had past success hosting funky parties and concerts at unique locations like BKLYN Yard, held a big food truck festival on Governors Island. By all accounts, it was a total clusterfuck, and dissatisfied attendees have taken to Twitter and the blogs to vent about the looooong hour-plus lines for each truck. (We warned you!) As one attendee wondered, "Anyone else at the #parked festival come close to eating their own foot in desperation?" And on the Nona Brooklyn blog, one Colleen Kane UNLOADS: more ›

It's Day 2 of iPhone 4's availability and folks are still clamoring for it. Maybe they were scared off by yesterday's lines. Maybe they thought today would be better. But Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells wrote this morning, "I've been waiting in line to buy the iPhone 4.0 since 6:55 am this morning. Currently at 14th and Washington, or about 200 yards from the Apple store at 14th and Ninth Avenue. 200-plus people ahead of me. It's 9:23 am right now and the line is nudging along..." more ›

The Big Apple BBQ block party is up and cookin' today in Madison Square Park, with pitmasters from around the country serving up every pork part imaginable with all the classic sides. To reiterate, plates are $8 each and there are cooking demos and live music all weekend long. Just make sure you're prepared to stand in line! more ›

While visiting the NYC Transit Sign shop in Brooklyn recently, Off the Rails blog caught a glimpse of the secret names of subway colors. Since the current design for the subway map was adopted in 1979, each shade for each line was given its own moniker; only a "handful of transit workers who oversee the system’s maps and signs" had seen it before. But now the colorful cat's out of the bag! more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] There's probably some sort of holiday travel nightmare situation unfolding everywhere today, but we're hearing that the Delta terminal at JFK airport is particularly hellish. A report over the newswire bleats: "LARGE UNRULY CROWD DELTA TERMINAL WEST GATE #12. PAPD UNITS ON SCENE REQUESTING ADD'L UNITS." Who'll be tased for Christmas? Twitter user Joel Clare says, "Whoa, JFK is a NUT HOUSE! If you are flying Delta out of JFK today expect 1.5+hours for the security line." more ›

Post offices have suffered a year of insufferable lines and rodent attacks, and now as a grand finale their terrible service is being featured in the Daily News. As holiday crowds rush to get their gifts shipped, there aren't enough USPS employees to keep things moving quickly. more ›

Answer: Some of them don't! Matthew Broderick's difficulty remembering lines during performances of Kenneth Lonergan's new play The Starry Messenger has, ahem, prompted a long article in the Times on the history and ethics of learning lines. The takeaway is that some actors, including the great Angela Lansbury, use earpieces to stay on cue. more ›

The DOT has been repainting many of the parking spaces on wide Queens streets so they're angled in the opposite direction of traffic, forcing drivers pull past them and back in. DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow tells the Daily News the new angles are being implemented because, "It's safer to back into an empty parking space than back out of one into oncoming traffic." But the change is apparently too disorienting for some Queens drivers, like Steve Goodman of Forest Hills, who tells 1010WINS, "They painted the lines in backwards. Why are they backwards like this? This is crazy!" And 61-year-old contractor David Graber complains, "I find it very confusing. The last time I was here, it was easy. You just pulled right in. They should've used someone less educated to make this decision." See, this mess wouldn't have happened if the State Senate was in charge of parking! Thankfully, the DOT is going to install large signs in Forest Hills instructing drivers how to back into the parking spots—in the meantime, it's chaos! more ›

If you were one of the 150,000 New Yorkers who tried and failed to nab one of the golden tickets to the Obama Inauguration distributed by Senator Chuck Schumer, consider yourself lucky. Schumer is now calling for an investigation into last Tuesday's utterly predictable clusterfuck, which left thousands languishing in lines far from the area where President Obama took his mangled oath of office. (Some were reduced to calling family at home and listening to Obama's address on TV via cell phone!) The Daily News obtained an e-mail sent to Schumer from one bitter ticket winner named Cathy Shannon, who writes, "I'm sorry I was a winner, as now I am a big loser. After waiting on line for 3-1/2 hours... I actually got to miss the event. It was disgraceful... The most disorganized event I ever attended in my life. Schumer says he "feels terrible" and promises he'll make it up to everyone in 2012! more ›

So that Red Hook IKEA seems to be doing quite well, thank you. McBrooklyn has an amusing account of check-out lines lasting well over an hour at the Swedish retailer this weekend: "We were so far back there was no way to even tell if we were in a cash only line or a credit and debit only line. People were getting pretty grumpy, let me tell you. A woman jumped ahead of us in line. When we pointed this out, she moved behind us, only to be challenged by the customer back there. She moved behind that customer, only to be berated by the next one. And so she worked her back to the back of the line, irate customer by irate customer." And don't get Lost City started on how B61 drivers have taken to hanging out at the IKEA parking lot, instead of driving their route during rush hour. more ›

Subscribers to the Metropolitan Opera are up in arms over changes to the ticket exchange policy that contributed to massive lines at the box office yesterday. The Times reports that because of ongoing construction, many subscribers were forced to queue up in the bowels of the Lincoln Center and wait as long as five hours to switch their tickets, which they used to be able to do over the phone. Chairs were brought out for the elderly and infirm, but opera fanatics like Wanda Flickinger of Bronxville, N.Y. -- a subscriber for over 40 years -- were not placated: "This is an insult, what we are being put through today." Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, shrugged off the long lines on the Met's surge in popularity, telling the Times, "It’s kind of a growing pain that we are experiencing." more ›

Yesterday’s notice about the long-overdue return of the Red Hook ball field food vendors elicited comments from disgruntled eaters who were disappointed by the new carts, which limit the vendors’ cooking space and caused massive, hour-plus lines. Commenter sofabait seems to reflect a growing consensus that the new Health Department oversight has changed things for the worse: “The exhaust fumes from their constantly idling trucks totally killed my appetite. Not sure if that is better for our health. The city sure knows how to fuck a good thing up.” more ›

In one of life's crueler ironies, it's usually either extreme heat or extreme rain that forces people to stand sweltering on a subway platform or out into the drenching elements. Today it's the former: subway service is still a disaster on several of the city's lines. more ›