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In the late summer of 2012, a few weeks after he’d been let go from a job at an A.T. & T. store on the Upper East Side, Robert Samuel posted a Craigslist ad offering to wait in line, for a fee, on September 21st, the release date of the iPhone 5. “When you work in mobile cells, you’re always selling the phone,” Samuel recalled recently. “You don’t ever get to be part of the excitement of actually purchasing it.” Someone responded to the ad, and agreed to pay Samuel a hundred dollars to stand for three hours outside the same A.T. & T. store that he used to work in. After his client texted to say that he’d successfully placed an online order for his new phone, Samuel resold his spot in the line to a second client. Then he went home to his apartment in Chelsea, gathered some milk crates that he had lying around, returned to the line, and sold those off as stools. By the end of the day, he’d made three hundred and twenty-five dollars. A new future opened up before him. The Line Dude was born.
Samuel, who is now forty-seven, is the founder and C.E.O. of Same Ole Line Dudes, New York’s most conspicuous line-sitting outfit. His business brought him international media attention this week, when hundreds of journalists descended on lower Manhattan for former President Donald Trump’s arraignment. A press line to enter the courthouse began to form on Monday afternoon, a full twenty-four hours before the hearing was scheduled to take place. As the line lengthened, news networks, newspapers, magazines, and Web sites scrambled to figure out how to hold their spots overnight. Some ordered staff to stand watch. Others hired line sitters.
NBC, which had secured the very first place in the line, was the first outlet to call Samuel. He soon arrived, dressed in a maroon tracksuit from Ivy Park, Beyoncé’s clothing line for Adidas. He was also joined by a colleague, Adonis Porch, who wore a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” windbreaker and a yellow-and-black cap emblazoned with the hashtag #LineDudes. Samuel and Porch met more than a decade ago online, and, when the demand for line sitters got high enough, Samuel pulled Porch into his business. That’s when Same Ole Line Dude became Same Ole Line Dudes. “He’s been a blessing in my life,” Samuel told me. Porch set up a small tent at NBC’s spot at the head of the line, and laid down a yellow mat advertising the company’s services, which read “We Wait for Your Wants.” Meanwhile, Samuel fielded calls from potential clients. “Same Ole Line Dudes, this is Robert speaking,” he said into his phone. He paused to listen. “Well, there’s a wait list currently,” he explained. “I can slot you in behind the Wall Street Journal and Rolling Stone.”
By Monday night, Samuel had thirteen line sitters holding spots for six news outlets, in a line that stretched around a city block. He charged the outlets fifty dollars an hour, double his usual price, and still he couldn’t keep up with demand. Samuel’s line sitters are mostly his family and friends, and, when customers call with line-job requests, he has to cajole sitters to report for duty. The Trump-arraignment line was high-profile, last-minute, and cold—that night, the temperature dropped into the forties. Porch, sitting in his tent, with a blanket in his lap, was one of the few people in the line who looked comfortable. He killed the time streaming TV shows on his phone.
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