Over the weekend, a burger from heaven fell from the sky and stuck a landing that would give Simone Biles a run for her money, in all places: Jamaica, Queens—or so it seemed.
When Brooklyn resident Lincoln Boehm and his wife (as it’s been covered in most media outlets, but I should probably disclose here that said ‘wife’ is me. I’m the wife!! I’ve been written out of this entire story!!! Not for any misogynist, re-writing herstory reasons, but mostly because I didn’t really care about the whole thing and kept nagging Lincoln to put his phone down, forget the burger and live in the moment...that is, of course, until it went viral) discovered an untouched, picturesque In-N-Out burger lying in the middle of a sidewalk in Jamaica, Queens.
The problem? The closest In-N-Out…is in Texas. And thus, the internet went completely nuts. Was it the doing of a rich playboy and private jet? A genius marketing ploy? A glitch in the matrix? How could this pristine, beloved Double-Double wind up here? Friends and friends of friends and strangers hopped on the In-N-Out mystery train, following along on Instagram as Lincoln and I posted about the surprising number of big outlets covering the story—Vice, Time, People, NPR!
Since Lincoln and I both work in media, some cynics painted us as capitalistic villains who planted the burger for our own gain—whether as a guerilla marketing ploy or Pizza Rat scheme to eventually sell as an ABC pilot (we’re still up for that, btw).