Crowding the tape. We do it. The cops put up caution tape, the parade functionaries put up sawhorses, the museum directors put up velvet ropes, and we belly up to them as though they’re going to stop the stray bullets, out-of-control floats, and idealism-maddened zealots. And we get sprayed with whatever detritus there is flinging itself past the mostly-imaginary boundaries set up by our social gatekeepers if not by actual physical limitations. Pow.
Witness the ‘innocent by-standers’ on the outermostside of a curve in a Dakar race. Pow.
Those in the first row of a Gallagher concert. Pow.
Those who crowd the line at the bank teller’s window when the sketchy guy who seems to make the teller nervous keeps waving the ragged slip of paper and gesturing to the back of the room with a pistol.
So, don’t ‘crowd the tape’ when watching races that end in man-made swamplands. You’re just gonna get your underpants covered in mud. Even when they’re neatly covered by every other piece of outerwear you’re also wearing.
