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Do the "Queue"

July 05, 2007 9:25 AM

WIMBLEDON, England

I hate waiting in line. It’s as painful as listening to Paris Hilton give an interview…guaranteed to make me insane in under a minute.  With that being said, you can imagine the look on my face as I strolled out of the All England Club on this unseasonably cold summer night, and encountered a colorful crowd lined up along the road that runs parallel to the venue. The majority of tickets to Wimbledon are typically sold to coporate sponsors or members of high society. So if the "common folk" want to sit in the stands....the thing to do is “queue.”

Tents are set-up on the sidewalk for as far as I can see. This is serious stuff. An estimated two-thousand people queue up each night during Wimbledon; thousands more queue during the day. Approximately five-hundred tickets for centre court and court one are available each day for the first nine days. A further six-thousand ground tickets for outside courts are available each day.

Some read books to pass the time, others play board-games. Many arrive armed with a bevy of beer…and a few even fire up the old "barby." The bobbies dressed in black who patrol the street at night say the majority are well-behaved. But in order to queue, you have to play by the rules. Tents are allowed to be set-up an hour after the gates shut (usually around (9:30pm)….and wakeup is at 6:30am sharp, when everything must be packed back up again.  But why put yourself through this, and endure an excruciatingly long wait, when you can just watch Wimbledon on tv?

“It’s the experience, the atmosphere,” said Beth Howe, who had settled into line around 2pm with three of her closest friends, all of whom were sitting in a circle, flipping through a collection of British tabloids. When I told her that some people (i.e. “me”) might consider her crazy for waiting in line all night....she shot back, “You’d be crazy not to do this. Wimbledon is a British institution. And queue’ing is an tradition” One of her accomplices, Kate Darch, was eighteen years old when she first “queue’d.” Ten years later she's back for more, with big plans once she sets foot onto the hallowed grounds:  “Center Court…that’s our goal. Especially with Andy Roddick and Roger Federer playing....they are definitely worth the wait.”

This time-honored tradition attracts all ages. And sometimes you to look at things through the eyes of a child to understand the fun in it. "You get to stay up late and eat junkfood," says nine-year old Emma Moolman. She goes on to explain that she is an aspiring tennis player…and likes what she sees in Roger Federer. “He has good technique and he doesn’t lose his temper,” she says with conviction. Her mom, Jacomin, reveals, “it’s not very posh to queue.” She kept it a secret from her friends until she was caught red-handed, when one of them happened to walk right past her, as she was setting up her tent on the sidewalk.

It dawned on me that Americans actually queue quite often. The most recent episode involved the iphone. Some fanatics waited in line for a week....to be among the first to buy this highly-coveted piece of technology. Being a big fan of Apple toys myself, I wondered if I would ever succumb to the temptation and join in on the frenzy?” Well....maybe. But it would still be as painful as a Paris Hilton interview. Hey wait, I bet she doesn't have to wait in line.....

July 5, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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