Inside The Lines

The tourists who pack Broadway shows seem, unaccountably, to have developed a new habit of standing in line outside the theatre they’re waiting to enter, when they could just as easily walk right up to the door and walk to their $100 reserved seat anytime they please. No one seems to know why they do it, and no native New Yorkers seem especially eager to point out that the big line o’ tourists isn’t strictly necessary. “There was no rational reason to stand in line. Had security lines at airports inured people to standing around, waiting to shed their shoes? Or had Americans since 9/11 come to see lining up as a sign of good citizenry, and a rejection of unseemly anarchy?”