Only in New York

New York is not a real place.

This is currently a joke that is going around on social media among the young(er) people of this city. They look into the camera, declare that New York is not real and then repeat something that happened to them in this city as proof that it must be fictional because it is inconceivable that there would be an actual place this could occur in real life.

I’ll give you an example: New York is not a real, yo’. I woke up yesterday at 4:15 a.m. so I could get in line for some free tickets that would be given out at noon, and when I got there, the line was already two blocks long.

After waiting 7 hours, 30 minutes I left New York’s Central Park with two tickets that got Sharon and I into the amphitheater where we watched an Academy Award-winning actress and her lookalike brother star in a Shakespeare play that also included Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage and Jesse Tyler Ferguson in the cast.

Yeah, that all actually happened.

Shakespeare in the Park is a long-standing tradition in New York. It goes back to 1954. It started with performances on the lawn. After about 20 years, it moved to an open-air theater. The series is known for a number of things, but two quite specifically.

• The casts tend to include some truly big-name actors.

• Tickets are free and distributed on the day of the show, which is staged at the freshly remodeled open-air amphitheater.

The Delacorte Theater seats just over 1,800. It’s estimated that 80,000 people attended Shakespeare in the Park each year. Currently, 8 million people are estimated to live in New York City.

This year, the production is Twelfth Night with Lupita N’Yongo in the lead role. Her brother, Junior, is also in the cast as are Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage and Sandra Oh. It has been very well reviewed.

You can see the supply and demand issue that is at work here. Usually, this would result in astronomical prices. However, the Public Theater has made a point of preventing reselling. The primary way it does this is by distributing the tickets, free, the day of the performance.

There are five ways to access tickets. Two involve lottery drawings conducted at noon the day of the show (i.e. dumb luck). Two require lining up with no guarantee of receiving tickets. The best way to be assured of getting tickets is also the longest: You line up in Central Park for the main dispersal.

Except you can’t line up in the park until it opens at 6 a.m., which means you start by lining up outside the park at 81st Ave and Central Park West. When I arrived at 5:05 a.m., the line was already at 83rd.

I packed an umbrella and a camping chair. I came fortified with a stainless steel coffee mug, a 32-ounce bottle of water and a protein bar.

I wore pants, and worried I would wind up being too hot. Turns out my choice of just a T-shirt was the problem. I wished I had brought a light jacket or even a sweatshirt.

At 6 a.m., we were led into the park to assume our places in line. There were four employees from the Public Theater there who did a wonderful job monitoring things.

It was only after we got into the park that I realized I was sitting next to two actors.

My first clue: “OK, let’s run some lines,” one young woman said to the other.

My next clue: I thought I recognized one from the most recent season of “Only Murders in the Building” which is probably my favorite show. I was only like 65 percent sure, though.

I was also very leery of being a 50-year-old dude asking the 20-something sitting next to me, “So, uh, are you like in this famous television show I like? ‘Cuz that’d be pretty awesome.” The only scenario I could see coming from this was a somewhat awkward 75-second conversation in which I professed to being a fan of the show, congratulated her on her success then followed by multiple hours of awkward waiting in line as she did her best to not be uncomfortable.

So I did something that is quite rare for me. I largely kept my mouth shut. I said, “God bless you,” when the young woman sneezed. She said, “Thank you.”

I laughed when she turned to face the sun, lifting her face up to tell her fellow actor she was photosynthesizing.

I then chimed in that this was actually the first time in three months that I could remember being cold in New York.

“Right?” responded one of the actors. “Totally.”

I generally kept to myself until I got home and consulted the Internet to determine, “Yup, that was her.”

She even wound up posting a picture to her Instagram that was very similar to a picture I took!

I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

Let’s get back to the line in the park.

Here’s where it started:

Here’s what it looked like:

Here’s where I was sitting:

There were approximately 125 people in front of me give or take people who’d gotten out of line to go to the bathroom, get something to eat or stretch their legs.

I used the bathroom three times over the course of the morning. I wrote in the journal I keep. At one point, I realized that I had become an abject cliché: I was reading the latest issue of “The New Yorker” while sitting in Central Park waiting for theater tickets.

At 11:40 a.m., we were told we should be packed up and ready to move at 11:55 a.m. At about 12:10, the line started moving and we moved forward in fits and starts for the next 25 minutes or so until it was my turn.

The tickets are distributed randomly. You don’t get the best of what’s left, you get what the computer spits out. We didn’t get the best seats per se. They were on the far left of the theater in the very last row. They were still absolutely awesome, though.

New York is a city that loves to tell you exactly how great it is. I generally find this to be not so much annoying as comical. It’s like a comedy bit that is constantly being performed here.

Last night, it really did feel like we were experiencing something that was special, and while I would never, ever advise someone to get up at 4 a.m. to wait in line for 7 and a half hours, I can tell you that I feel really fortunate I had the freedom to be able to do that.

This was one of those nights when being in New York felt absolutely unreal.