The Chipotle Just Outside the Lunch Boundary

The Chipotle, at the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 100th Street, had come to the neighborhood in a 2015 lease, in the same complex as the Whole Foods.

Every border dispute in history has come down to one restaurant just on the other side.

The paper reported two sophomores as very assertive in fighting for a future in which they could walk through Chipotle's push-to-open doors. Others were content. Inside the line there was cheese pizza on 92nd and Broadway, Joe & The Juice, the Whole Foods, and a café on 93rd and Columbus whose grilled cheese one student rated below the school's own Columbia Prep sandwich.

Ninth graders had it harder. They could go out only a couple of days a week. (The school's current page says ninth graders go out twice a week in the fall and three times in the spring.) One freshman told the paper she did not like the rules and wanted to go out every day, since they were in high school. She also said, fairly, that she understood why freshmen had limits.

Then she made the real argument. Because of COVID, cafeteria tables were capped at four, and many ninth graders were new and had not made friends yet. Eating out was different, she said: "If you happen to run into someone at a restaurant, you could sit down with them, and it could, you know, create friendships."

I came in expecting a burrito story and got a sociology paper. It is the best case for a lunch policy I have ever read, and it was made by a ninth grader standing just inside a line on a map.

At our house there is a boundary too. The middle one may walk to the corner store, and not past it, because past it there is a busy street. Two doors past the busy street there is a bakery. He has made his case at dinner: he would meet more people there. My wife asked whom, exactly. He said the baker.

We're considering it.