A little after 5 p.m. Thursday in midtown Manhattan, with the thermometer reading 101 but the heat of anticipation much higher, two older women from Idaho found some shade next to a sidewalk Taylor Swift billboard.“We just want to see…something,” said Gigi, on her first trip to New York City.A whole lot of New York’s security apparatus had been deployed to ensure that she couldn’t.Swift’s rehearsal dinner, per an NYPD memo, was set to start in less than an hour with 100 exclusive invited guests, but as Gigi, her friend Shelley and Shelley’s carriage-bound infant granddaughter sweltered on 31st Street, the wheels of wedding privacy were grinding lustily into action.An innocuous curb-based white tent — built for semi-privacy and slight cool — was suddenly extended right up to the door of the VIP entrance of Madison Square Garden, ensuring the tent check-in would lead to total seclusion for any incoming guests. Timothée Chalamet, Spike Lee, Mariska Hargitay and even Swift herself did not pass through such opaque surroundings to see the 2026 Finals-playing New York Knicks. Then again, Jalen Brunson never headlined The Eras Tour.The privacy tarp went up in a matter of seconds and a few commuters who had been walking down the sidewalk hoping to reach the Eighth Avenue of Penn Station saw it thrust in front of them and, flummoxed like Frodo and Samwise at The Path of the Withywindle, disorientedly found themselves turning back.