{"id":1667,"date":"2006-10-16T12:36:40","date_gmt":"2006-10-16T20:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/10\/new_yorkers_love_lines_even_more_than_robert_downey_jr.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T15:56:26","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T20:56:26","slug":"whether_its_gyr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/whether_its_gyr.html","title":{"rendered":"New Yorkers Love Lines Even More Than Robert Downey, Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Suggesting that it just may be a gyro* after all, the New York Sun invokes the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nysun.com\/article\/41565\">halo effect<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The daily pita pilgrimage begins at 7:30 p.m., when New Yorkers &#8212; and a handful of in-the-know tourists &#8212; begin lining up at the corner of 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue. Within minutes, the line emanating from the fragrant gyro stand there stretches halfway down the block.<\/p>\n<p>Two other gyro carts within a half-block radius have no wait at all. But city foodies contend that Halal Gyro and Chicken is worth waiting on a line that can exceed 45 minutes on some evenings. The stand&#8217;s $5 platter includes chicken, lamb, rice, salad, pita, and, most importantly, customers say, a tasty combination of white and red sauces.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>In New York, a city of seemingly limitless choices, inhabited by famously fast-paced people, there are still some things for which residents are willing to wait in line. What&#8217;s worth the idle time? For some it&#8217;s a bargain; for others it&#8217;s a status symbol. For some, it&#8217;s a gyro platter; for others it&#8217;s a pair of sneakers, a basket of Buffalo wings, a museum exhibit, a stuffed toy, a cupcake, or two tickets to &#8220;Shakespeare in the Park.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The heightened anticipation for what&#8217;s deemed worth waiting for can enhance the mind&#8217;s perception of those cart-cooked gyros, saucy chicken wings or buttercream-frosted cupcakes, a New York-based clinical psychologist, Robert Leahy, said, referring to a phenomenon known as the &#8220;Halo Effect.&#8221; &#8220;Today people are very insecure about getting the right thing, and the easiest way to make a decision is to seek out what everyone else is buying,&#8221; Mr. Leahy, who heads up the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy on East 57th Street, said. &#8220;If they didn&#8217;t feel like they had to fit in, and they just looked at what they value, they might make different decisions.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>*Or Buffalo Wings, Noodles, Buttercream Frosting or Cheese Omelettes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suggesting that it just may be a gyro* after all, the New York Sun invokes the halo effect: The daily pita pilgrimage begins at 7:30 p.m., when New Yorkers &#8212; and a handful of in-the-know tourists &#8212; begin lining up at the corner of 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue. Within minutes, the line emanating from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturalanthropological","category-feed","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}