  We explicitly construct the states of the 2d free boson on the infinite line
with specified asymptotic charges. The Minkowski CFT states derive from (the
analytic continuation of) the shrinking limit of Euclidean angular
quantization, wherein the superselection sector for fixed asymptotic charges
corresponds to specific endpoint operators for the angular quantization on the
sphere. When applied to string theory, we obtain a new class of fundamental
strings that are neither open nor closed and which we dub "stretched strings".
We describe constant-time snapshots of the worldsheets of the different types
of stretched strings, and as a special case we find a heuristic picture of
Maldacena's "long strings" in the $c=1$ string theory.
