I was talking to an alumnus of Ike’s at a bar once.  This was while the place was still extant in that troubled space next to Daimaru, a perfectly fine sushi restaurant where they never let the pot of green tea go empty.  Had to stop going there because I’d easily drink five pots of tea and disprove the myth that tea is somehow gentler than coffee.
I was describing for my friend the incomprehension I had for those who could wait endlessly for anything, especially while hungry.  Brunches, burritos, ice cream: in a city full of pleasures, denying one’s self the pleasure of possessing the object of desire is surely a Tantric exercise meant to prolong the pleasure—if you’re not me.   If you’re me, you keep walking until you find what you need, not so much a compromise as a forced hunger march.

But to Ike’s: even worse was the possibility that patrons stepped into line while un-hungry, knowing that sure as the sun, eventually hunger pangs would strike, and that intent to queue for food was as good as being hungry.  This strikes me as rather a first-world practice, unless you grew up with a grandparent who spoke of rationing and Stalin, or a parent on welfare.  In which case, ah! nostalgia.

The meat of his argument came down to something so simple and pure, I thought of it last night as I watched a huddling mob warming themselves by thoughts of cheaply knocked-off couture. 
“That line,” he said, “crazy.  My buddies and I said we’d never look twice at a girl who waited two hours for a sandwich.”