Where have the crowds of procrastinators gone?

Are mobs of frantic people begging for stamps, long lines stretching from Postal trucks parked on the street, and people dressed in red, white and blue handing out anti-tax pamphlets at the end of the last day to mail one's taxes a thing of the past, or am I missing something? The sidewalks in front for the Farley post office on 8th Ave at 5 minutes to the postmark deadline were empty not just in comparison to years past, but empty in comparison to an average Tuesday night in Manhattan.

I'll admit that I haven't been to the Farley post office on the night of the tax deadline in a few years. It's not that I didn't try. Last year on tax day, I called a friend quite well known for waiting until the last minute, and asked when he was going to make his yearly rush for the postmark. He, like me, had completed his taxes well in advance. Without someone else or myself having forms to mail, I had the hunch I would feel like the adult guy at the playground who didn't come with a kid.

This year thou, the same thing that had kept me from the yearly ritual, TurboTax, forced me to leave for 34th Street in a slight rush at 11pm. I had been hitting the submit button all evening to make my electronic submission, but every time I did, I was greeted with the little pop-up message asking that I try again in two hours, as Intuit was experiencing a lot of traffic. At a quarter to 11, I realized the message asking for two more hours was no longer a polite little request from a company that greatly underestimated last-minute traffic, but rather a deceptive ploy that would leave me submitting well past the deadline.

A bit pleased I now had an excuse to be a part of the post office mess, I printed and ran out. But when I arrived, there were no long lines snaking out of the building, no street theater, and the one news van that was there sat across the streets with its lights dim.

Sure, there were people in the building, but I could move around, and that didn't seem right.