Was this worth locking up our phones for two hours? You bet. Photo: Amir Hamja.

Long before Ramy Youssef came out on stage at his June 28 show at the Beacon Theatre, a palpable buzz swept through the room. Scattered throughout the auditorium were figures of note: Youssef’s Mountainhead co-star Cory Michael Smith ran across an aisle to greet a friend, while SubwayTakes’s Kareem Rahma stood on the far end of the room holding court. Cynthia Nixon and her family sat in the middle of the orchestra, the former gubernatorial candidate and current double HBO star standing to talk with people around her. Behind me, someone whispered, “I feel like he’s gotta be here,” and immediately it was clear who he was talking about.

There was no obvious sign of New York City’s surprise Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was present, but his presence was felt nonetheless. Over the course of Youssef’s set, reminders of Mamdani’s victory and the memory that something unexpected — something possibly quite good — had happened in this city had the audience giggling and roaring in equal measure, like laughing gas was being pumped through the room. That’s why, perhaps, it was of no great surprise but no less excitement that when at the end of Youssef’s set, he spoke about two things that left him hopeful at the end of this week. Right on cue, he brought out Mamdani and the audience leapt to their feet.

Mamdani had held court at Brooklyn Steel and various mid-sized New York venues, but the near-3,000 seat Beacon reacted as though he was the main event. (Later in the evening, Mamdani would make a cameo appearance at Barclays to a crowd of more than six times that.) He ran through some of his campaign’s most salient talking points — New York should be affordable — while Youssef granted him the space to soapbox after a quick word of advice: “No islands. When they invite politicians to islands, you gotta say no,” he warned. Mamdani put his hand on his heart and agreed he would refuse any island invites.

There remained still the other thing that Youssef alluded to — the second moment that left him hopeful in the past week. He got choked up in his introduction, moved to a point of stammering reverence, before welcoming out Mahmoud Khalil, the recently released Columbia University alum and new father who’d been detained by ICE in Louisiana from March 8 until June 20 for exercising his right to free speech about the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Once again, the audience jumped to their feet, the standing ovation outlasting the love the crowd had just given Mamdani. A woman behind me repeated “oh wow,” even as everyone took their seats again, as a man with keffiyeh a few rows ahead brushed tears out of his eyes.

Though Khalil opened by promising he would not try to be funny, there was a surprising lightness to his affect, a beaming smile and warm eyes. Khalil spoke in praise of Mamdani’s campaign — “a man so principled it’s a wonder ICE hasn’t tried to arrest him,” he joked (to which Youssef told him he could do a set if he wanted) — and Youssef’s comedy crusade. “Our joy is an act of resistance,” Khalil said, saying that it was one of many things this administration wanted to take away. With his arm around Mamdani, Khalil said that Tuesday’s victory gave him hope as well, that he wanted his son to grow up in a city where a man like Mamdani could be mayor. “My hope is that your son will grow up in a city where he is free to speak,” Mamdani said. It was an undeniably emotional moment — a twofold homecoming for men who had fought hard for what they believed in the face of systems that tried and failed to hold them back. The three men — “brothers,” as Youssef called them — held each other, and took a picture in front of the crowd. The show had required participants to lock up their phones. “I know none of you can take this picture,” Youssef taunted as the three men configured themselves on stage, “so we’ll do it for you.”

Later, when the crowd poured out onto the humid streets of the Upper West Side, people chattered and murmured as the Beacon’s staff unlocked their phones. “I told you he’d be there,” a woman said to her boyfriend. “It has never felt this good to be right.”