Wicked lottery

Last weekend I saw Wicked at the Orpheum, which was excellent and very cleverly written and acted. Especially exciting, though, was that we got L&M row orchestra seats (from which most of the stage was quite visible) for $25 as opposed to the typical $99 for weekend performances.

I don't know whether the Orpheum does this same-day lottery drawing (details here) for all of its performances, but it's extremely worthwhile if heading into SF isn't a full-day commitment for you. I went on Saturday which I'm sure is more competitive than the weekday shows, and I'd guess there were 100-120 names in the bucket by the time they began drawing (2 hours before the show). They called about 7 names for connected seats, and another 5 (including us, yay!) for split seats, which turned out to be in front of one another. You're allowed to submit one name per person so our chances were around 20%, though it definitely felt like a bit of a long-shot amidst the crowd.

Needless to say, an excellent deal, and another great perk of living in the city.