We went into the city to check out Comedy Dayat Golden Gate Park. I was more than a mite curious, but I’m not sure it’s something I aspire to do some day.
Basically, it’s an outdoor free area, in Boston imagine a concert on the Common or the Esplanade, with five hours of comedy. To paraphrase the comic Rita Rudner, I don’t like doing anything for that long. I can’t actually imagine five hours of comedy, but I think it would feel like having screws drilled into my ear canal.
We didn’t show up for all five hours.
For the bit of time we were there it was fun as an audience. I got to see Greg Proops, Todd Barry and Jackie Kashian. (Todd Barry will always be special to me, because last year when he performed in Cambridge, I was among people out for drinks with him after, when a fan bought the table around. After some showbiz ego hilarity, it was realized the fan was actually a fan of local boy, Chris Walsh. You gots to love the quasi-celeb moment.)
From a non-audience member, comic perspective, though, it seemed like the hellish of hell gigs. An outdoors crowd of about 2,000 maybe less, sitting on blankets lacks a certain intimacy or really ability to pay attention at all. Not to mention that the Blue Angels were in town and their flight path was occassionally directly overhead.
Jets and comedy, a winning combination.
Maybe the funnest part was strolling around the Haight and Golden Gate Park. Much of hippiedom is alive and well and unaware that the clock has ticked through decades, probably because the drumming circle is so damn hypnotic.
Later, dinner at a dinky Thai place that actually is pretty good and M. really likes was in the seedy, filthy, cracky Tenderloin. The beauty of that part of the day was determining how long it takes for a crack addict named Nadine to panhandle a buck off of M. He hung in there, but she hung in there tougher, relentless in wearing him down.
Here are a couple of pics from here bearing evidence that M. is cute regardless of surroundings: 
AND San Francisco is just so San Francisco-y: 
