At pretty much the very last minute, I found out that #Ham4Ham--the lottery for 10 dollar tickets to the hit musical Hamilton--was returning to the theater where the show is. For the last few months, because of the insane crowds, the lottery has purely been online. Before that, hundreds of people would jam the sidewalks and the streets in the hope of getting one or two of the 21 tickets they offer every lottery. And at a couple of the lotteries each week, there would be a mini-performance--sometimes some of the cast, or folks from other Broadway show, or, memorably, the young cast of the musical FUN HOME enacting all eight of the Hamilton kids.
Perhaps the first time the word "cholera" has been used in a rap.
Today was a little different. It was Lin-Manuel and the mayor of New York, the very tall Bill de Blasio plus quite a few police officers, keeping things moving on W. 46th Street. And the hundreds of hopefuls, all of us wanting to be in The Room Where It Happens. The mayor thanked Lin-Manuel in English and Spanish (even translating a line from the play into Spanish), and most of us didn't win tickets, but we all won. Because New York, as Hamilton learned, is a place where you can be reborn.
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