"Is This the New Normal?"

Twelfth Night closed last night at Shakespeare in the Park. After fruitlessly pursuing the Virtual Line lottery for several days, I got up at 5:15 after an all-night rain and rode down to the park to be in this kind of daily line by 6 AM. Passing all the "Line Continues Here" signs, I saw no one, and no one, and no one until reaching the box office and still no one except a police car, where an amplified voice said, "The line is on Central Park West at 81st." And so it was, all the way, as I kept pedaling, up to 87th. I guess it was outside because the Park is officially closed from 1 AM to 6 AM. Right at six, Public Theater employees started moving us into place in the usual location. Also as usual, there were an astonishing number of people in line who appeared to have raised the money for their free tickets by asking for spare change on Manhattan street corners. Or who were, at a minimum, not your usual Shakespeare crowd. My part of the line inched past all the usual locations, still was not positioned at the Pinetum and still not at the beginning of the reservoir, whose only proximity to the Delacourt Theater is that it occupies part of the Parks 843 acres. Finally, we came to where we would have stationed ourselves and the genial Public guy said, "You people have absolutely no chance to get a ticket. Go home and enjoy the rest of your Sunday." Some woman asked the title question, meaning is it now necessary to get up at 1:30 to get Shakespeare tickets or hire a linesitter. No, he assured, this is closing night, it rained all the month of June -- true, New York has never been so green in summer -- and the reviews for this show were the best in 20 years for Summer Shakespeare.

So I did what Ringo once said, in a different context, the Beatles would do after their run -- got myself a sesame bagel with cream cheese from Absolute Bagels and sat in Riverside Park and moped.