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The tour’s next show is Oct. 18 in \u003ca href=\"https://jackiecomedy.com/good-medicine.html\">San Francisco\u003c/a> at the Strand Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keliiaa joined The California Report Magazine host \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/sasha-khokha\">Sasha Khokha\u003c/a> for a conversation on indigeneity, loss and the transformative power of laughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On fitting into a box\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Everyone was confused [about my ethnic background]. A lot of people, especially when I was younger, thought I was Asian. When I got into middle school, a lot of people thought I was Latina because a lot of my friends were Mexican.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I always felt like I fit in, but it was usually because I fit into whatever box people thought I was, as opposed to me really feeling like all of my pieces were acknowledged and understood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78A_d1QwPA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My family came over from Portugal, and they landed in Hayward, and they started an orchard. A lot of people don’t know this, but [some] Azorean-Portuguese — from the Azores islands — came to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Growing up, I would do a lot of Portuguese traditions. I was a part of the Holy Ghost Festival, but then I would show up to the event and they wouldn’t assume that I was Portuguese — that question mark, I’ve always seen it on people’s faces. So those jokes are important to me because people have always tried to put me into a box.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think when I was younger, I just remember being like, “God, I wish I was just one thing.” Now I’ve come to understand that my background is a superpower and it’s also something that I’m very proud of. I love being Portuguese. I love being Native. And now, I don’t feel like I have to choose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what her Native ancestors passed down\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My grandparents are from Nevada, and they met at Stewart Indian Boarding School. Washoe and Paiute were the two main tribes that were at Stewart. I knew that it wasn’t great — the administration was trying to change who they were as Native people.[aside postID=news_12051769 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250806-SHANICEROBINSONRESILIENCE_00065_TV-KQED.jpg']But my grandfather would say, “We had a roof over our head and we had three squares a day. For a kid growing up in Nevada during the Depression, that was more than anyone could ask for.” He talked about Stewart as this place that helped him survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But also, we didn’t get into the other things. As a kid, I knew, I’m not gonna ask beyond what they’re willing to tell me because\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11883520/examining-the-painful-legacy-of-native-american-boarding-schools-in-the-u-s\"> there was a darkness to it\u003c/a>. In boarding school, they’re tough on people, and that was passed on to us, too. So it has reverberated \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/education/535528/the-lasting-impact-of-native-american-residential-schools\">through all the generations.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crazy thing people don’t understand about the boarding schools is that all the food was cooked by the kids, all the laundry was done by the kids, all the mowing, all the like yard work done by kids. It was this whole sort of environment that was built on the labor of young native children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a complicated relationship, and I do honor that my grandparents were very proud to have gone to Stewart. And then I also understand there were many things that I was not informed of.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On being Native and finding humor\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Native people — we’re just inherently hilarious. Teasing is a way that we show our love and affection. It’s part of our culture, part of our community. It’s very much part of [our] DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though all these dark things may have happened, there’s a lot of levity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak_ebn1uMn0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I went to Cal, did Native American studies and minored in city and regional planning. Then I went on to get my master’s in urban planning from Columbia. I always thought I’m gonna go work for the government because that’s what my family does. I didn’t even think of comedy as a life you can make a living off of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my core memories that sort of helped me get to where I am in comedy is in 2005, when I was a student at UC Berkeley. It was Native American Heritage Month, and the graduate student program hosted a comedy night — \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFSoWpYjkzc\">Charlie Hill\u003c/a> was the headliner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill is the godfather of Native comedy. He was the first-ever Native comic to get a late-night set on \u003cem>The Richard Pryor Show\u003c/em>. I got a chance to see him live. And it was so cool, it opened me up in a way that I was like, “I wanna do this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The joke [I wrote] about skiing in Tahoe and desecrating the sacred lands was a hard one because it really bums people out. But simultaneously, I think it needs to be said, because I’m the only person who can say this and have you think in a different perspective about, “I guess all land here is Native land, and there was a community here that this was important to, and now it’s my playground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, as a comic, I do want people to think differently when they leave the show, and also know that there are modern Native people out here in this world. I feel every day I’m trying to combat this Hollywood spaghetti Western view of what Indian Country is.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On grief and getting on stage\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When my mom passed, I was just kind of feeling like a husk. [That’s when] comedy found me. The worst possible thing that could happen to me happened, and all the fear of going up and bombing just went away. And then I went to my first ever open mic and I did okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was 26 [that year, and] I had my first ever gig at the Native American Health Center [in San Francisco]. I performed for a crowd of like 250. I was only like a few months into stand-up, but to have the support from the Native community right from the jump was amazing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055719\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055719\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comedian and emcee Jackie Keliiaa speaks during the 3rd annual Indigenous Peoples Day Commemoration at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco on Oct. 11, 2021.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>On her tour, \u003cem>‘Good Medicine”\u003c/em>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sometimes I’ll be performing and I’ll just be drawn to one person in the audience. I’ll find myself kind of returning to them. And then after the show, they’ll come up to me and share some personal story about a loss, or they’ll be like, “This is the first time I’ve laughed in a while.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I know that that’s part of what I’m doing, and especially in this cold, hard world that is getting harder and scarier by the minute. It is so important to have comedy in our lives.[aside postID=news_12051236 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/250626-GRANTSPASSDECISIONANNI-03-BL-KQED.jpg']To be sitting with your loved ones and knocking your head back because you’re laughing so hard, that is a gift and not everybody gets that. I do understand that sometimes my role out there is to make people laugh, but also to give someone a moment, a break from it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a two-way street because when I’m on stage, I am processing the world around me … I have learned how to give power back in moments that I may have not had it. It is the way that I can retell a story with perspective, agency, and power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a woman, as a person of color, as someone who’s experiencing this world from a Native perspective as well, and a city person, all these different intersections of my identity, there are so many times that the world wants to tell me no. And I use the stage to go, “Watch, I’m gonna do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On critiquing the term resilience\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>I have to share a quote from one of my favorite authors, \u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/563403/there-there-by-tommy-orange/\">Tommy Orange\u003c/a>: “And don’t make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived is no badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t like resilient being used as a frame to discuss Native experience. I understand that resilience as a feature has been [there] throughout my entire life. So many of the losses or the failures have catapulted me into success. It’s so important to use those moments that didn’t work out the way you wanted to, to find something else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of comics have found comedy in really dark times. Comedy finds people, and they take these really gnarly moments in their lives and turn them into something that gives back not only to themselves but to the community around them. That in itself is an exercise in resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/resilience\">series about resilient Californians\u003c/a>, and what lessons they may have for the rest of us.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/oakland\">Oakland-based\u003c/a> comedian \u003ca href=\"https://jackiecomedy.com/index.html\">Jackie Keliiaa\u003c/a> has built a career turning identity and grief into humor that heals as much as it provokes. Raised in Hayward, Keliiaa draws inspiration — and material for her stand-up routines — from her Native American, Native Hawaiian, Portuguese and Italian heritage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She has been featured in the book ‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/We-Had-a-Little-Real-Estate-Problem/Kliph-Nesteroff/9781982103033\">We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native American Comedy\u003c/a>’, appeared on \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1AYIBGAgU4\">Team Coco\u003c/a>, voiced the character Bubble in Netflix’s Native animated series \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81098500\">Spirit Rangers\u003c/a> and co-created the all-Native comedy tour \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otDl3urzaNU\">Good Medicine\u003c/a>. The tour’s next show is Oct. 18 in \u003ca href=\"https://jackiecomedy.com/good-medicine.html\">San Francisco\u003c/a> at the Strand Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keliiaa joined The California Report Magazine host \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/sasha-khokha\">Sasha Khokha\u003c/a> for a conversation on indigeneity, loss and the transformative power of laughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On fitting into a box\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Everyone was confused [about my ethnic background]. A lot of people, especially when I was younger, thought I was Asian. When I got into middle school, a lot of people thought I was Latina because a lot of my friends were Mexican.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I always felt like I fit in, but it was usually because I fit into whatever box people thought I was, as opposed to me really feeling like all of my pieces were acknowledged and understood.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/K78A_d1QwPA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/K78A_d1QwPA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>My family came over from Portugal, and they landed in Hayward, and they started an orchard. A lot of people don’t know this, but [some] Azorean-Portuguese — from the Azores islands — came to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Growing up, I would do a lot of Portuguese traditions. I was a part of the Holy Ghost Festival, but then I would show up to the event and they wouldn’t assume that I was Portuguese — that question mark, I’ve always seen it on people’s faces. So those jokes are important to me because people have always tried to put me into a box.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think when I was younger, I just remember being like, “God, I wish I was just one thing.” Now I’ve come to understand that my background is a superpower and it’s also something that I’m very proud of. I love being Portuguese. I love being Native. And now, I don’t feel like I have to choose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what her Native ancestors passed down\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My grandparents are from Nevada, and they met at Stewart Indian Boarding School. Washoe and Paiute were the two main tribes that were at Stewart. I knew that it wasn’t great — the administration was trying to change who they were as Native people.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But my grandfather would say, “We had a roof over our head and we had three squares a day. For a kid growing up in Nevada during the Depression, that was more than anyone could ask for.” He talked about Stewart as this place that helped him survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But also, we didn’t get into the other things. As a kid, I knew, I’m not gonna ask beyond what they’re willing to tell me because\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11883520/examining-the-painful-legacy-of-native-american-boarding-schools-in-the-u-s\"> there was a darkness to it\u003c/a>. In boarding school, they’re tough on people, and that was passed on to us, too. So it has reverberated \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/education/535528/the-lasting-impact-of-native-american-residential-schools\">through all the generations.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crazy thing people don’t understand about the boarding schools is that all the food was cooked by the kids, all the laundry was done by the kids, all the mowing, all the like yard work done by kids. It was this whole sort of environment that was built on the labor of young native children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a complicated relationship, and I do honor that my grandparents were very proud to have gone to Stewart. And then I also understand there were many things that I was not informed of.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On being Native and finding humor\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Native people — we’re just inherently hilarious. Teasing is a way that we show our love and affection. It’s part of our culture, part of our community. It’s very much part of [our] DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though all these dark things may have happened, there’s a lot of levity.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ak_ebn1uMn0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ak_ebn1uMn0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>I went to Cal, did Native American studies and minored in city and regional planning. Then I went on to get my master’s in urban planning from Columbia. I always thought I’m gonna go work for the government because that’s what my family does. I didn’t even think of comedy as a life you can make a living off of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my core memories that sort of helped me get to where I am in comedy is in 2005, when I was a student at UC Berkeley. It was Native American Heritage Month, and the graduate student program hosted a comedy night — \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFSoWpYjkzc\">Charlie Hill\u003c/a> was the headliner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill is the godfather of Native comedy. He was the first-ever Native comic to get a late-night set on \u003cem>The Richard Pryor Show\u003c/em>. I got a chance to see him live. And it was so cool, it opened me up in a way that I was like, “I wanna do this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The joke [I wrote] about skiing in Tahoe and desecrating the sacred lands was a hard one because it really bums people out. But simultaneously, I think it needs to be said, because I’m the only person who can say this and have you think in a different perspective about, “I guess all land here is Native land, and there was a community here that this was important to, and now it’s my playground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, as a comic, I do want people to think differently when they leave the show, and also know that there are modern Native people out here in this world. I feel every day I’m trying to combat this Hollywood spaghetti Western view of what Indian Country is.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On grief and getting on stage\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When my mom passed, I was just kind of feeling like a husk. [That’s when] comedy found me. The worst possible thing that could happen to me happened, and all the fear of going up and bombing just went away. And then I went to my first ever open mic and I did okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was 26 [that year, and] I had my first ever gig at the Native American Health Center [in San Francisco]. I performed for a crowd of like 250. I was only like a few months into stand-up, but to have the support from the Native community right from the jump was amazing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055719\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055719\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/002_SanFrancisco_IndigenousPeoplesDay_10112021_qed-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comedian and emcee Jackie Keliiaa speaks during the 3rd annual Indigenous Peoples Day Commemoration at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco on Oct. 11, 2021.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>On her tour, \u003cem>‘Good Medicine”\u003c/em>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sometimes I’ll be performing and I’ll just be drawn to one person in the audience. I’ll find myself kind of returning to them. And then after the show, they’ll come up to me and share some personal story about a loss, or they’ll be like, “This is the first time I’ve laughed in a while.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I know that that’s part of what I’m doing, and especially in this cold, hard world that is getting harder and scarier by the minute. It is so important to have comedy in our lives.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>To be sitting with your loved ones and knocking your head back because you’re laughing so hard, that is a gift and not everybody gets that. I do understand that sometimes my role out there is to make people laugh, but also to give someone a moment, a break from it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a two-way street because when I’m on stage, I am processing the world around me … I have learned how to give power back in moments that I may have not had it. It is the way that I can retell a story with perspective, agency, and power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a woman, as a person of color, as someone who’s experiencing this world from a Native perspective as well, and a city person, all these different intersections of my identity, there are so many times that the world wants to tell me no. And I use the stage to go, “Watch, I’m gonna do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On critiquing the term resilience\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>I have to share a quote from one of my favorite authors, \u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/563403/there-there-by-tommy-orange/\">Tommy Orange\u003c/a>: “And don’t make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived is no badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t like resilient being used as a frame to discuss Native experience. I understand that resilience as a feature has been [there] throughout my entire life. So many of the losses or the failures have catapulted me into success. It’s so important to use those moments that didn’t work out the way you wanted to, to find something else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of comics have found comedy in really dark times. Comedy finds people, and they take these really gnarly moments in their lives and turn them into something that gives back not only to themselves but to the community around them. That in itself is an exercise in resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My Wildest Story is a national live storytelling and comedic trauma-bonding event series from the pop-up comedy collective Fools Circle. Earlier this month, some of the Bay Area’s favorite comedians and storytellers gathered at KQED for this showcase of crazy and jaw-dropping personal experiences that could only happen here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This episode contains explicit language.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2367808393\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:48] Hey, what’s up, it’s Ericka, quick note, we’re playing something a little different today and this episode’s got some explicit language in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:01] Hey, it’s Ericka Cruz Guevara and on this Memorial Day weekend, we’re taking a quick break from the news and making space for some laughter. Earlier this month, KQED Live along with the pop-up comedy collective, Full Circle, hosted some of the Bay Area’s favorite comedians and storytellers for an event called My Wildest Bay Area Story. Celebrating stories that highlight local culture and personal experiences that could only happen here. And today we’re gonna share four of those stories with you. So stick around for some laughter and for some hollering, and I’m gonna hand it off to full circle founder and host Jonathan Teklai right after this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:01:54] Are you guys ready for a Mason show? Make some noise. Okay, so this is still a comedy show. I know that we’re at KQED, but we’re here to laugh, right? So we need some more energy, all right? Are y’all ready for some more comedy? Make some noises. We got some East Bay representation with his next comic. He’s from Oakland. He’s the host of the local Don’t Tell Comedy, one of the biggest comedy shows in the world. And he has a new comedy special called Black Excellence. Please clap it up for the very funny Marcus Howard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marcus Howard \u003c/strong>[00:02:34] Hey, what’s up San Francisco folks? How we doing? Doing good, yeah? Awesome. I’m gonna tell y’all a story about one of the wildest things I ever saw on BART. I love BART, dude. BART is amazing, because it’s like the great equalizer, you know? Like on BART, you see all walks of life. You can see crackheads, you can see businessmen, you can seen businessmen smoking crack, you now? It’s like a, it’s a beautiful place, you no? One particular time, right, I got on the BART at, what was that, 19th Street Station, right? I’m sitting there, I’m having a good day. Get to 12th Street station, a dude walks onto the train and he has a speaker and a microphone. And I’m sitting there and I’m going, ah shit, here we go, right? Cause those of you that laugh, you guys know that what’s about to happen is an act of terrorism, okay? Yeah, cause what just walked onto the train is an entity known as a BART Rapper, okay? To be a Bart rapper, you need to have three things. You guys need to be unemployed, you need have a dream, and you have to have no idea how to follow that dream, okay? Right? So this guy, he steps on the bar, and usually, I treat BART rappers the same way that you would a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. You just be real smooth, you know? You don’t say anything, don’t make no eye contact, you’re basically invisible. But this guy he gets on the train and he starts off, he goes, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I will be performing for you today, I’m gonna do some music. I go by the Young Humble Trillionaire, and this dude is none of those things, okay? So he starts rapping for a little bit, and it’s terrible. It’s some of the worst shit I’ve ever heard, it’s so sad. But then we get to the West Oakland station, and then I’m sitting there and watching this dude, he’s rapping. Another dude walks onto the train holding a speaker and a microphone. So the guy gets onto the train, he stops, he takes a look, they both lock eyes, and now there’s a Mexican standoff happening here, right? I swear to God, it was like real silent, they were just staring at each other. I saw a tumbleweed pass through. And the dude, the “trillionaire,” he goes, “Hey bro, I got this car right now.” And the other dude, he was on some type of different type of timing, because he went, “Fuck you, this is my train now.” Right? And so the two are going arguing back and forth and the “trillionaire” says, fuck it, he turns up his music, and then he just starts rapping over the dude. Other dude, he starts rapping too, and he turns his music even louder. And just for context, we are in a tunnel underneath the ocean right now, Right, so these dudes are going back and forth, they’re having a duel right now, right? And then finally, Trillionaire says, fuck it, he throws out his mic, and then he starts fighting with the dude. And they’re going back-and-forth, they’re pushing bam, here, here. They’re hitting, hitting. And here’s the thing, while Trillionaire lacks what he lacks in musical ability, he makes up in hands, you know? So he just starts welling on the dude, right, and then we finally pull up to Embarcadero Station, and then Trillionare picks the dude up, throws him off the train with his stuff and then the doors closed, and then he continues to rap for like four more stops. And then afterwards, I was starting to get to my stop and he goes, all right, everybody, that’s been your performance for tonight. My Venmo is Young Humble Trillionaire, and then I Venmo request him for mental damages, you know? Yeah, and that’s the story about the craziest thing I ever saw on BART, you guys. Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:06:05] One more time for Marcus Howard, one more time for Marcus Howard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:06:11] All right, all right, we actually have a reverse gentrifying San Francisco. So we have a comedian from New York City clapped up for the Northeast New York. Okay, been living in the Bay, killing it all over comedy clubs, cobs, everything in the whole Bay Area. You’ve seen him on Fox, you’ve seen him on TV, now you’ve seen him on KQED Live. Clap it up for their very funny Joe Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Hill \u003c/strong>[00:06:45] Ayy, ayy, give it up for the DJ over there. Show him some love. Over there working. How y’all feeling? Listen, I’m gonna get right into it. Where’s my parents at? Parents, clap it up right now. I need y’all right now! I’m going through some nightmares here in the Bay. As you know, inflation is hitting our pockets. It’s hitting me hard. Daycare is whipping my ass. Let me just, let’s get that out the way. I got a 15 year old and a four year old. Yeah, don’t woo, help me with them. I need help. Especially that four-year-old, man. Daycare, it’s $1,400 a month for daycare. And he only go three days a week. I know, I’m like, he better be a black boat and dunkin’ by the end of the month. Like, what’s going on? And then daycare is one of them things, you know, as a father, you’d be like, where’s the bang for the buck going, right? You pay attention to the signs when you show up to daycare to pick up your kid, and you’d like, oh, this is all a scam. Soon as you walk through the door, the first thing you hear is that cough from in the back. That kid needs to be home. Who’s son is that? You gotta be careful when you’re going to pick your kids up. Sometimes you got kids that’s trying to leave with you that’s not even yours. They just wanna go home. I be trying to leave with my son. This little white girl grabbed my other hand and tried to scoot out with me and my son, I said, Katie, if you don’t get your ass inside, I’m from New York. That’s a felony where I come from, girl. And you gotta be careful with daycare. Everybody’s sick. These kids, they like terrorists. They bring home natural born diseases every night. Y’all think I’m bullshiting? My son came home with something called the hand, foot, and mouth disease. I thought it was fake. I Googled it. It’s a real thing. But the symptoms is just straight out plain simple. Your hand, your foot, and your mouth gon be jacked up. Like, it’s like you’re gonna have the chicken pox cousin all over your body. It’s crazy. And it’s Mother’s Day, right? It’s Mother Day, we can clap it up for all the moms in here. That’s right, that’s right. I had my mom come visit me in the Bay recently, man. And it’s interesting because when your parents come visit you or stay with you under your rules, your house, it’s a different mind thing that happens with you. Because you start to think about when you was a kid. I’m raised in the Bronx, New York, born and raised. I had a single Black mother, three boys. Single mother. I know she watching right now. She’s going to whoop my ass after I tell this joke. Single, strong Black mother. So a lot of times, you would just be coming into stuff. And you come into the house one day, she just look at you and just say something like, “You know, I brought you in this world. I take you the hell out.” And I’m like, I’m 10. Why are you telling me this right now? Who hurt you? What’s going on? So I’m thinking about that, especially little things like you couldn’t have company in New York City. Mom’s like, no, you don’t got no company. No video games. I’m, like, what is this? A concentration camp? Why we can’t play video games around here? You try to stay over somebody’s house? She’s like you can’t do that. You got a bed right upstairs. What you need to stay over somebody’s house for? So when she said she’d come into the Bay to see the kids, I said, dang, this is my time to get her back. I don’t know how, but I got to do this, right? I got do this. First night too, she come knocking on my door. Late night, knocking, knocking. “Hey baby, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m going into the city to hang out with some friends. Do you mind if I get a spare key?” I said, whoa, let me just, I had to come out my room and close my door, I said hold on a second. Let’s just get a little standing real quick before you hang out your little friends, right. Cause that’s how you stood up to your little friends. First of all, we don’t give out keys to strangers. You just got here this couple days ago, okay? Second of all. You need to be home when that street light come on in Berkeley, right there. Good night, and I slammed the door on her face and went to bed. She was mad too. Couple nights later, here she comes. She comes knocking again. She’s knocking, knocking. And if you’re familiar with the Bay, you know that wind chill factor come off that water and it get a little chilly in the Bay. She come knocking. She’s like, “Hey baby, it’s a little chilly in the front of the house. Do you mind? Cutting the pilot on and heating up the house?” I said, whoa, whoa whoa. Let’s just get an understanding of shit real quick. First of all, we don’t put the thermostat past 50 degrees on the west coast. And honestly, if you’re cold or something, you need to put a hoodie on and some socks and go in the front room. Good night, and I slam the door on her face again. I said, I know she mad. So now it’s like her last night. I’m getting ready to take her back to the airport. We ride in the car. She quiet, y’all. Like her feelings is hurting. I’m like, damn. I’m, like, you all right over there? She like, yeah, I’m all right, you know. I had fun in the Bay. I got to see my, my, my grands and the family. But I just felt limited the whole time I was out here. I felt like I couldn’t be myself. And I knew where she was going. And I had to stop on her track. I said, hold on a second now. I stopped the car, put it in park. I said hold on. Let me explain something to you. I brought you in the Bay, and I’ll take you to hell out. My name is Joe Hill, y’all have a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:12:07] Up next, this is a personal honor of mine to invite this next brother, one of Oakland’s best people, one the biggest representative of the Lake Mer- he’s the only person banging Lake Merritt and all of the Bay Area, actually from there. He’s one of the co-founders of the 510 day. He’s a storyteller, he’s a comedian, one realest niggas I know, clap it for Leon Sykes!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leon Sykes \u003c/strong>[00:12:43] What’s going on? Ooh, hello. What’s goin’ on? How y’all doin’? I want to talk about the best time of my life, one of the greatest moments of my life. We’re gonna go back and pass a little bit. We’ll go back about 15 years ago. It’s 2010. It was Oakland, California. And at this time, Oakland, Oakland was still hella Black. And a lot of folks came out to the city. They weren’t going to a party in Oakland. It was really for a lot of folks in that area. And around that time, The New Parish was just opening up. So I’m giving y’all some backstories, right? And before The New Parish officially opened up, there used to be these secret ass shows with Dave Chappelle there. And hella people used to go. I ain’t had no money so I couldn’t go, I was broke. So eventually, there was this amazing event that showed up there called Monday Soul. So if you know, make some noise. Monday Soul, come on now. So Monday Soul was a live R&B series for up and coming artists all through the Bay Area. Action, shout out London Land, hello. And so at Monday Soul you had all these performances and it was really dope. But in 2010, something really special happened. August, 2010. And Dave Chappelle was in there. And I’m the host. Of Monday Soul. At this time, I’m this young milk mustache punk about 25 years old. I don’t know how to host parties. I didn’t know what I’m doing. I am drunk on stage. I’m over the falling over. I was like, hey, come on next, we got Melis Way. And they had to tell me, like, calm down. We need you to learn. And so Dave Chappelle’s here, and I’m freaking out. Like, this is the guy I’ve been watching my whole goddamn young life unto now. And they’re like, hey, we got some performances coming. And Dave Chappelle, he might come up, he may say something. And at this time, Ron Dellums is leaving office. He’s leaving office and he says, I’m not rerunning. So there’s gonna be a new person running for mayor. And at the time, it’s 15 motherfuckers running. I mean like 15 people were running. And this night, we decided to have some of the candidates come on stage at 10 o’clock at night. To talk about why they’re running. Here’s a fun fact about 2010. Four Locos still had ecstasy in it, they still had caffeine in it. And when you drank it, you were horny. Also, The New Parish had this drink called the Parish Punch. They had ecstasy in, caffeine, and you got horny as hell. What’s funny is a lot of people were in here, were there during that time. You know what I’m saying? And luckily, you know, some of our swimmers wasn’t swimming. You know, we’ve been, five years later we was shooting. But anyway, so we’re there and you have, I’m talking about when they say we brought anybody up, we had a guy there that is notoriously getting kicked out of clubs for drinking, overly drinking, getting carried out. He’s running for mayor. He said, “I already tell y’all about why I should be your next mayor.” So we’re like, nah, that’s all bad. So we go through all those, and then we bring out Dave Chappelle. And we have this singer Mimi. She’s singing a song for Dave Chappelle. Do you remember that? You don’t remember that, huh? Because you was drinking that Four Loco. And so Mimi sings the song, and they’re like all right. So my stage name is D-NAS. D-N-A-S, D-NAS So they say, all right, D-Nas, like, we need you to get Dave off the stage. We want to make sure that we get on with the show. It’s about 11:30 now. We got about two hours left. So I’m like, cool. So I’m standing to the side, and Dave’s like, all, right, Oakland, I love y’all. I’ve been out here for a few years. And so I’m, like—I’m whispering, like. All right, Dave, I’m going to come get you off stage. He goes, nigga, what? What the hell are you saying? I’m like, no, no. I’m gonna come get you. We know we’re gonna do a transition. He goes, nigga, what’s your name? And I was like, oh, I’m D-Nas. I’ma come. I’mma come get ya. So he looks at the stage, he said, all right, y’all. Coming up stage, next is your motherfucking council member, D-nasty. Cause this is the type of niggas we got runnin’ Oakland. And I sat there and I was embarrassed even though D- nas was the name I had. Like, essentially what Tenor said, couldn’t be a grown man being called Delicious. So I changed it to D-Nas. But him calling me D-nasty, I was like, God damn, I really gotta just stick to D-nas. And that, for me, was one of the greatest times of my life, to be able to be on stage with Dave Chappelle, be made fun of, and everybody loved it. It’s on video somewhere, and I’m gonna repost it so cause I need some money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:18:05] Alright, we have one more comedian, a very special treat. She wasn’t even supposed to be able to do this show. She finished another event early just to be be able do this. She’s literally one of San Francisco’s funniest all time comedians. She’s a regular at the Punch Line and all the comedy clubs in San Francisco. Ladies and gentlemen, please clap it up for the very funny, Carla Clay!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Carla Clay \u003c/strong>[00:18:33] All right, keep clapping, you guys, keep clappin’. Thank you. I want you guys to know right now I have to bring my purse up here because I don’t know nobody so I’m keeping an eye on my stuff right here. I’m from San Francisco, born and raised here and I want to you guys know something happened in the Bay Area not too long ago. It happened to all of us. It caused a lot of traffic, all right? Because someone decided that they wanted to jump off the Richmond Bridge, right? And it caused a lotta traffic. I mean, a lotta of traffic. It was just, the traffic was ridiculous. I want what you guys do right now. You can roll off the Richmond Bridge and survive. I know a couple of people in the back looking at me like, Richmond got a bridge? Come on now, and where I live here in San Francisco, I actually had a show to do on that night, so I had to make it, I had drive to Oakland. Where I live, normally it would take me 26 minutes to drive to Oakland. On that particular Friday, it was a Friday, it was gonna take me 49 minutes, an hour and 49 minutes. An hour and forty-nine minutes to Oakland? Are you for real? I’m like, I’m not gonna make it. So I had the call the booker up, said, get somebody else, I not gonna to make. The traffic out here is crazy. So he said, Carla, please, please you gotta make it! I don’t have nobody else. I go, my God, the only way for me to get to Oakland is to take public transportation. But a week ago, before that incident, I had to go to court and the judge had ordered me to stay off of public transportation. No, because of some bullshit, right? But I want you guys to know, I made it. I made to Oakland, I did two shows. I took BART, so now I got to get back on BART to make it back to San Francisco, so right? I go back to BART, I’m at the Oakland station, I’m looking around, I’m at the 12th Street, right, and I’m lookin’, lookin’, looking. Took me six minutes to find the San Francisco platform because you have to go downstairs. I didn’t know that. There’s no signs. I’m thinking, do we need a GoFundMe page for Oakland to put a sign up? So right, so now I’m on BART. I’m down there waiting for BART and people knew Jack City’s going on the platform. This man is walking around selling one shoe. Finally, the train shows up, I get on the train, make it back to San Francisco, and I get off at Civic Center. I know, I know somebody should’ve called and told me, they should’ve said, you know what? You should’ve got off at Daily City and walked back. That’s what you should’ve done. But no, I make it up to the street level, people, and I’m like, oh, what’s going on? Right, so now I gotta, I gotta make it down to the, I gotta go to the Five Fulton, I gotta get on to the five Fultons, right? So I gotta to make it to Hyde and McAllister. So I’m there by myself, waiting on the bus. I’m on the bus by myself. Waiting on the Bus. Here come the bus. Five people come out of nowhere. I don’t know where these people came from. They came out of no where. So we all get on the bus, we get on a bus. I got my little clipper card. I’m at the little station of Pan Pan. Five people to get on behind me. I’m like, oh shit, am I paying for everybody? Three people go to the front, two people go to the back, right? One man has, he has a wheelchair. He’s not in the wheelchair. He’s pushing the wheelchair. Now the MUNI driver, and she has to get out of her seat to lock the wheelchair up. So I go in the back and people are looking at me like I’m with them. And I’m looking at everybody like. No, I’m not, right? And one guy, he’s sitting in the back, he goes, he’s like, I just want y’all to know, I just wanna y’all to know I’m from here. I don’t do what they do, I don’t do what they do, I’m strictly crack-cocaine, I smoke crack-cocaine. I’m like, wow. What is going on in San Francisco at night time, right? And this man actually has a knife in his hand. He has a knife, he’s doing this with a knife. And the bus driver can see this from her seat. So she yells from her seat. Do he got a knife? I’m like, yeah, he got a knife. And then she go yell, he gonna need to put that knife away. I’m like, you want me to tell him?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Carla Clay \u003c/strong>[00:22:51] Because I’m like, if I say anything to this man, I know I’m going to jail because I’m not even supposed to be on the bus, right? So I’m, like, I’m now going to do it. I said, you know what? You know what, this is too much. You know, what? I got off the bus. I got off. I walked home. 10 blocks. 10 blocks! This is at midnight. So by the time I got home, the only thing I wanted to do was get in my car and drive to the Richmond Bridge. Oh, that was crazy because I believe that that person was still there. I was going to push him off. I was gonna push him off the bridge. That’s what I was gonna do. Oh my God. Plus you like, I want you guys to know I am famous in Santa Rosa. Thank you. Thank you, yeah, you know, because they want to put a statue of me up in Santa Rosa. I told them, no, don’t do that. I have I have enough pictures up around the different counties here in the Bay Area. I don’t need a picture of Santa Rosa, you guys. That’s my time. Thank you all very, very much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:24:06] Shout out to Jonathan Teklai, founder of Full Circle, and host of this event. By the way, this was just a taste, but the full event was actually an hour and a half long, and it’s up now on YouTube. I’m gonna leave you a link to that in our show notes so you can watch the whole thing, which includes a panel of Bay Area storytelling experts, and a voting round on some of the best stories. Thanks as well to KQED Live producer, Tayleur Crenshaw. And the rest of the KQED Live Events team. By the way, did you know that KQED hosts some really cool live events just like this one at our headquarters in The Mission? Be sure to check out what KQED Live’s got cooking up at kqed.org slash live. The Bay is made by me, Jessica Kariisa, Allen Montecillo, and Mel Velasquez, with support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, and Holly Kernan. Support for the Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. And I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thank you so much for listening. Peace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/live/FTXcOvNByOQ\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Watch the full event\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My Wildest Story is a national live storytelling and comedic trauma-bonding event series from the pop-up comedy collective Fools Circle. Earlier this month, some of the Bay Area’s favorite comedians and storytellers gathered at KQED for this showcase of crazy and jaw-dropping personal experiences that could only happen here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This episode contains explicit language.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2367808393\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:48] Hey, what’s up, it’s Ericka, quick note, we’re playing something a little different today and this episode’s got some explicit language in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:01] Hey, it’s Ericka Cruz Guevara and on this Memorial Day weekend, we’re taking a quick break from the news and making space for some laughter. Earlier this month, KQED Live along with the pop-up comedy collective, Full Circle, hosted some of the Bay Area’s favorite comedians and storytellers for an event called My Wildest Bay Area Story. Celebrating stories that highlight local culture and personal experiences that could only happen here. And today we’re gonna share four of those stories with you. So stick around for some laughter and for some hollering, and I’m gonna hand it off to full circle founder and host Jonathan Teklai right after this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:01:54] Are you guys ready for a Mason show? Make some noise. Okay, so this is still a comedy show. I know that we’re at KQED, but we’re here to laugh, right? So we need some more energy, all right? Are y’all ready for some more comedy? Make some noises. We got some East Bay representation with his next comic. He’s from Oakland. He’s the host of the local Don’t Tell Comedy, one of the biggest comedy shows in the world. And he has a new comedy special called Black Excellence. Please clap it up for the very funny Marcus Howard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marcus Howard \u003c/strong>[00:02:34] Hey, what’s up San Francisco folks? How we doing? Doing good, yeah? Awesome. I’m gonna tell y’all a story about one of the wildest things I ever saw on BART. I love BART, dude. BART is amazing, because it’s like the great equalizer, you know? Like on BART, you see all walks of life. You can see crackheads, you can see businessmen, you can seen businessmen smoking crack, you now? It’s like a, it’s a beautiful place, you no? One particular time, right, I got on the BART at, what was that, 19th Street Station, right? I’m sitting there, I’m having a good day. Get to 12th Street station, a dude walks onto the train and he has a speaker and a microphone. And I’m sitting there and I’m going, ah shit, here we go, right? Cause those of you that laugh, you guys know that what’s about to happen is an act of terrorism, okay? Yeah, cause what just walked onto the train is an entity known as a BART Rapper, okay? To be a Bart rapper, you need to have three things. You guys need to be unemployed, you need have a dream, and you have to have no idea how to follow that dream, okay? Right? So this guy, he steps on the bar, and usually, I treat BART rappers the same way that you would a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. You just be real smooth, you know? You don’t say anything, don’t make no eye contact, you’re basically invisible. But this guy he gets on the train and he starts off, he goes, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I will be performing for you today, I’m gonna do some music. I go by the Young Humble Trillionaire, and this dude is none of those things, okay? So he starts rapping for a little bit, and it’s terrible. It’s some of the worst shit I’ve ever heard, it’s so sad. But then we get to the West Oakland station, and then I’m sitting there and watching this dude, he’s rapping. Another dude walks onto the train holding a speaker and a microphone. So the guy gets onto the train, he stops, he takes a look, they both lock eyes, and now there’s a Mexican standoff happening here, right? I swear to God, it was like real silent, they were just staring at each other. I saw a tumbleweed pass through. And the dude, the “trillionaire,” he goes, “Hey bro, I got this car right now.” And the other dude, he was on some type of different type of timing, because he went, “Fuck you, this is my train now.” Right? And so the two are going arguing back and forth and the “trillionaire” says, fuck it, he turns up his music, and then he just starts rapping over the dude. Other dude, he starts rapping too, and he turns his music even louder. And just for context, we are in a tunnel underneath the ocean right now, Right, so these dudes are going back and forth, they’re having a duel right now, right? And then finally, Trillionaire says, fuck it, he throws out his mic, and then he starts fighting with the dude. And they’re going back-and-forth, they’re pushing bam, here, here. They’re hitting, hitting. And here’s the thing, while Trillionaire lacks what he lacks in musical ability, he makes up in hands, you know? So he just starts welling on the dude, right, and then we finally pull up to Embarcadero Station, and then Trillionare picks the dude up, throws him off the train with his stuff and then the doors closed, and then he continues to rap for like four more stops. And then afterwards, I was starting to get to my stop and he goes, all right, everybody, that’s been your performance for tonight. My Venmo is Young Humble Trillionaire, and then I Venmo request him for mental damages, you know? Yeah, and that’s the story about the craziest thing I ever saw on BART, you guys. Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:06:05] One more time for Marcus Howard, one more time for Marcus Howard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:06:11] All right, all right, we actually have a reverse gentrifying San Francisco. So we have a comedian from New York City clapped up for the Northeast New York. Okay, been living in the Bay, killing it all over comedy clubs, cobs, everything in the whole Bay Area. You’ve seen him on Fox, you’ve seen him on TV, now you’ve seen him on KQED Live. Clap it up for their very funny Joe Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Hill \u003c/strong>[00:06:45] Ayy, ayy, give it up for the DJ over there. Show him some love. Over there working. How y’all feeling? Listen, I’m gonna get right into it. Where’s my parents at? Parents, clap it up right now. I need y’all right now! I’m going through some nightmares here in the Bay. As you know, inflation is hitting our pockets. It’s hitting me hard. Daycare is whipping my ass. Let me just, let’s get that out the way. I got a 15 year old and a four year old. Yeah, don’t woo, help me with them. I need help. Especially that four-year-old, man. Daycare, it’s $1,400 a month for daycare. And he only go three days a week. I know, I’m like, he better be a black boat and dunkin’ by the end of the month. Like, what’s going on? And then daycare is one of them things, you know, as a father, you’d be like, where’s the bang for the buck going, right? You pay attention to the signs when you show up to daycare to pick up your kid, and you’d like, oh, this is all a scam. Soon as you walk through the door, the first thing you hear is that cough from in the back. That kid needs to be home. Who’s son is that? You gotta be careful when you’re going to pick your kids up. Sometimes you got kids that’s trying to leave with you that’s not even yours. They just wanna go home. I be trying to leave with my son. This little white girl grabbed my other hand and tried to scoot out with me and my son, I said, Katie, if you don’t get your ass inside, I’m from New York. That’s a felony where I come from, girl. And you gotta be careful with daycare. Everybody’s sick. These kids, they like terrorists. They bring home natural born diseases every night. Y’all think I’m bullshiting? My son came home with something called the hand, foot, and mouth disease. I thought it was fake. I Googled it. It’s a real thing. But the symptoms is just straight out plain simple. Your hand, your foot, and your mouth gon be jacked up. Like, it’s like you’re gonna have the chicken pox cousin all over your body. It’s crazy. And it’s Mother’s Day, right? It’s Mother Day, we can clap it up for all the moms in here. That’s right, that’s right. I had my mom come visit me in the Bay recently, man. And it’s interesting because when your parents come visit you or stay with you under your rules, your house, it’s a different mind thing that happens with you. Because you start to think about when you was a kid. I’m raised in the Bronx, New York, born and raised. I had a single Black mother, three boys. Single mother. I know she watching right now. She’s going to whoop my ass after I tell this joke. Single, strong Black mother. So a lot of times, you would just be coming into stuff. And you come into the house one day, she just look at you and just say something like, “You know, I brought you in this world. I take you the hell out.” And I’m like, I’m 10. Why are you telling me this right now? Who hurt you? What’s going on? So I’m thinking about that, especially little things like you couldn’t have company in New York City. Mom’s like, no, you don’t got no company. No video games. I’m, like, what is this? A concentration camp? Why we can’t play video games around here? You try to stay over somebody’s house? She’s like you can’t do that. You got a bed right upstairs. What you need to stay over somebody’s house for? So when she said she’d come into the Bay to see the kids, I said, dang, this is my time to get her back. I don’t know how, but I got to do this, right? I got do this. First night too, she come knocking on my door. Late night, knocking, knocking. “Hey baby, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m going into the city to hang out with some friends. Do you mind if I get a spare key?” I said, whoa, let me just, I had to come out my room and close my door, I said hold on a second. Let’s just get a little standing real quick before you hang out your little friends, right. Cause that’s how you stood up to your little friends. First of all, we don’t give out keys to strangers. You just got here this couple days ago, okay? Second of all. You need to be home when that street light come on in Berkeley, right there. Good night, and I slammed the door on her face and went to bed. She was mad too. Couple nights later, here she comes. She comes knocking again. She’s knocking, knocking. And if you’re familiar with the Bay, you know that wind chill factor come off that water and it get a little chilly in the Bay. She come knocking. She’s like, “Hey baby, it’s a little chilly in the front of the house. Do you mind? Cutting the pilot on and heating up the house?” I said, whoa, whoa whoa. Let’s just get an understanding of shit real quick. First of all, we don’t put the thermostat past 50 degrees on the west coast. And honestly, if you’re cold or something, you need to put a hoodie on and some socks and go in the front room. Good night, and I slam the door on her face again. I said, I know she mad. So now it’s like her last night. I’m getting ready to take her back to the airport. We ride in the car. She quiet, y’all. Like her feelings is hurting. I’m like, damn. I’m, like, you all right over there? She like, yeah, I’m all right, you know. I had fun in the Bay. I got to see my, my, my grands and the family. But I just felt limited the whole time I was out here. I felt like I couldn’t be myself. And I knew where she was going. And I had to stop on her track. I said, hold on a second now. I stopped the car, put it in park. I said hold on. Let me explain something to you. I brought you in the Bay, and I’ll take you to hell out. My name is Joe Hill, y’all have a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:12:07] Up next, this is a personal honor of mine to invite this next brother, one of Oakland’s best people, one the biggest representative of the Lake Mer- he’s the only person banging Lake Merritt and all of the Bay Area, actually from there. He’s one of the co-founders of the 510 day. He’s a storyteller, he’s a comedian, one realest niggas I know, clap it for Leon Sykes!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leon Sykes \u003c/strong>[00:12:43] What’s going on? Ooh, hello. What’s goin’ on? How y’all doin’? I want to talk about the best time of my life, one of the greatest moments of my life. We’re gonna go back and pass a little bit. We’ll go back about 15 years ago. It’s 2010. It was Oakland, California. And at this time, Oakland, Oakland was still hella Black. And a lot of folks came out to the city. They weren’t going to a party in Oakland. It was really for a lot of folks in that area. And around that time, The New Parish was just opening up. So I’m giving y’all some backstories, right? And before The New Parish officially opened up, there used to be these secret ass shows with Dave Chappelle there. And hella people used to go. I ain’t had no money so I couldn’t go, I was broke. So eventually, there was this amazing event that showed up there called Monday Soul. So if you know, make some noise. Monday Soul, come on now. So Monday Soul was a live R&B series for up and coming artists all through the Bay Area. Action, shout out London Land, hello. And so at Monday Soul you had all these performances and it was really dope. But in 2010, something really special happened. August, 2010. And Dave Chappelle was in there. And I’m the host. Of Monday Soul. At this time, I’m this young milk mustache punk about 25 years old. I don’t know how to host parties. I didn’t know what I’m doing. I am drunk on stage. I’m over the falling over. I was like, hey, come on next, we got Melis Way. And they had to tell me, like, calm down. We need you to learn. And so Dave Chappelle’s here, and I’m freaking out. Like, this is the guy I’ve been watching my whole goddamn young life unto now. And they’re like, hey, we got some performances coming. And Dave Chappelle, he might come up, he may say something. And at this time, Ron Dellums is leaving office. He’s leaving office and he says, I’m not rerunning. So there’s gonna be a new person running for mayor. And at the time, it’s 15 motherfuckers running. I mean like 15 people were running. And this night, we decided to have some of the candidates come on stage at 10 o’clock at night. To talk about why they’re running. Here’s a fun fact about 2010. Four Locos still had ecstasy in it, they still had caffeine in it. And when you drank it, you were horny. Also, The New Parish had this drink called the Parish Punch. They had ecstasy in, caffeine, and you got horny as hell. What’s funny is a lot of people were in here, were there during that time. You know what I’m saying? And luckily, you know, some of our swimmers wasn’t swimming. You know, we’ve been, five years later we was shooting. But anyway, so we’re there and you have, I’m talking about when they say we brought anybody up, we had a guy there that is notoriously getting kicked out of clubs for drinking, overly drinking, getting carried out. He’s running for mayor. He said, “I already tell y’all about why I should be your next mayor.” So we’re like, nah, that’s all bad. So we go through all those, and then we bring out Dave Chappelle. And we have this singer Mimi. She’s singing a song for Dave Chappelle. Do you remember that? You don’t remember that, huh? Because you was drinking that Four Loco. And so Mimi sings the song, and they’re like all right. So my stage name is D-NAS. D-N-A-S, D-NAS So they say, all right, D-Nas, like, we need you to get Dave off the stage. We want to make sure that we get on with the show. It’s about 11:30 now. We got about two hours left. So I’m like, cool. So I’m standing to the side, and Dave’s like, all, right, Oakland, I love y’all. I’ve been out here for a few years. And so I’m, like—I’m whispering, like. All right, Dave, I’m going to come get you off stage. He goes, nigga, what? What the hell are you saying? I’m like, no, no. I’m gonna come get you. We know we’re gonna do a transition. He goes, nigga, what’s your name? And I was like, oh, I’m D-Nas. I’ma come. I’mma come get ya. So he looks at the stage, he said, all right, y’all. Coming up stage, next is your motherfucking council member, D-nasty. Cause this is the type of niggas we got runnin’ Oakland. And I sat there and I was embarrassed even though D- nas was the name I had. Like, essentially what Tenor said, couldn’t be a grown man being called Delicious. So I changed it to D-Nas. But him calling me D-nasty, I was like, God damn, I really gotta just stick to D-nas. And that, for me, was one of the greatest times of my life, to be able to be on stage with Dave Chappelle, be made fun of, and everybody loved it. It’s on video somewhere, and I’m gonna repost it so cause I need some money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jonathan Teklai \u003c/strong>[00:18:05] Alright, we have one more comedian, a very special treat. She wasn’t even supposed to be able to do this show. She finished another event early just to be be able do this. She’s literally one of San Francisco’s funniest all time comedians. She’s a regular at the Punch Line and all the comedy clubs in San Francisco. Ladies and gentlemen, please clap it up for the very funny, Carla Clay!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Carla Clay \u003c/strong>[00:18:33] All right, keep clapping, you guys, keep clappin’. Thank you. I want you guys to know right now I have to bring my purse up here because I don’t know nobody so I’m keeping an eye on my stuff right here. I’m from San Francisco, born and raised here and I want to you guys know something happened in the Bay Area not too long ago. It happened to all of us. It caused a lot of traffic, all right? Because someone decided that they wanted to jump off the Richmond Bridge, right? And it caused a lotta traffic. I mean, a lotta of traffic. It was just, the traffic was ridiculous. I want what you guys do right now. You can roll off the Richmond Bridge and survive. I know a couple of people in the back looking at me like, Richmond got a bridge? Come on now, and where I live here in San Francisco, I actually had a show to do on that night, so I had to make it, I had drive to Oakland. Where I live, normally it would take me 26 minutes to drive to Oakland. On that particular Friday, it was a Friday, it was gonna take me 49 minutes, an hour and 49 minutes. An hour and forty-nine minutes to Oakland? Are you for real? I’m like, I’m not gonna make it. So I had the call the booker up, said, get somebody else, I not gonna to make. The traffic out here is crazy. So he said, Carla, please, please you gotta make it! I don’t have nobody else. I go, my God, the only way for me to get to Oakland is to take public transportation. But a week ago, before that incident, I had to go to court and the judge had ordered me to stay off of public transportation. No, because of some bullshit, right? But I want you guys to know, I made it. I made to Oakland, I did two shows. I took BART, so now I got to get back on BART to make it back to San Francisco, so right? I go back to BART, I’m at the Oakland station, I’m looking around, I’m at the 12th Street, right, and I’m lookin’, lookin’, looking. Took me six minutes to find the San Francisco platform because you have to go downstairs. I didn’t know that. There’s no signs. I’m thinking, do we need a GoFundMe page for Oakland to put a sign up? So right, so now I’m on BART. I’m down there waiting for BART and people knew Jack City’s going on the platform. This man is walking around selling one shoe. Finally, the train shows up, I get on the train, make it back to San Francisco, and I get off at Civic Center. I know, I know somebody should’ve called and told me, they should’ve said, you know what? You should’ve got off at Daily City and walked back. That’s what you should’ve done. But no, I make it up to the street level, people, and I’m like, oh, what’s going on? Right, so now I gotta, I gotta make it down to the, I gotta go to the Five Fulton, I gotta get on to the five Fultons, right? So I gotta to make it to Hyde and McAllister. So I’m there by myself, waiting on the bus. I’m on the bus by myself. Waiting on the Bus. Here come the bus. Five people come out of nowhere. I don’t know where these people came from. They came out of no where. So we all get on the bus, we get on a bus. I got my little clipper card. I’m at the little station of Pan Pan. Five people to get on behind me. I’m like, oh shit, am I paying for everybody? Three people go to the front, two people go to the back, right? One man has, he has a wheelchair. He’s not in the wheelchair. He’s pushing the wheelchair. Now the MUNI driver, and she has to get out of her seat to lock the wheelchair up. So I go in the back and people are looking at me like I’m with them. And I’m looking at everybody like. No, I’m not, right? And one guy, he’s sitting in the back, he goes, he’s like, I just want y’all to know, I just wanna y’all to know I’m from here. I don’t do what they do, I don’t do what they do, I’m strictly crack-cocaine, I smoke crack-cocaine. I’m like, wow. What is going on in San Francisco at night time, right? And this man actually has a knife in his hand. He has a knife, he’s doing this with a knife. And the bus driver can see this from her seat. So she yells from her seat. Do he got a knife? I’m like, yeah, he got a knife. And then she go yell, he gonna need to put that knife away. I’m like, you want me to tell him?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Carla Clay \u003c/strong>[00:22:51] Because I’m like, if I say anything to this man, I know I’m going to jail because I’m not even supposed to be on the bus, right? So I’m, like, I’m now going to do it. I said, you know what? You know what, this is too much. You know, what? I got off the bus. I got off. I walked home. 10 blocks. 10 blocks! This is at midnight. So by the time I got home, the only thing I wanted to do was get in my car and drive to the Richmond Bridge. Oh, that was crazy because I believe that that person was still there. I was going to push him off. I was gonna push him off the bridge. That’s what I was gonna do. Oh my God. Plus you like, I want you guys to know I am famous in Santa Rosa. Thank you. Thank you, yeah, you know, because they want to put a statue of me up in Santa Rosa. I told them, no, don’t do that. I have I have enough pictures up around the different counties here in the Bay Area. I don’t need a picture of Santa Rosa, you guys. That’s my time. Thank you all very, very much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:24:06] Shout out to Jonathan Teklai, founder of Full Circle, and host of this event. By the way, this was just a taste, but the full event was actually an hour and a half long, and it’s up now on YouTube. I’m gonna leave you a link to that in our show notes so you can watch the whole thing, which includes a panel of Bay Area storytelling experts, and a voting round on some of the best stories. Thanks as well to KQED Live producer, Tayleur Crenshaw. And the rest of the KQED Live Events team. By the way, did you know that KQED hosts some really cool live events just like this one at our headquarters in The Mission? Be sure to check out what KQED Live’s got cooking up at kqed.org slash live. The Bay is made by me, Jessica Kariisa, Allen Montecillo, and Mel Velasquez, with support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, and Holly Kernan. Support for the Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. And I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thank you so much for listening. Peace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/live/FTXcOvNByOQ\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Watch the full event\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Author Kliph Nesteroff has written about comedy for years. His new book, \"We Had a Little Real Estate Problem,\" takes a look at Native American comedians — a community that's been misunderstood, stereotyped and often erased in Hollywood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book's title is the punchline of a famous joke from pioneering Native American stand-up comedian, Charlie Hill, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"That was the crux of his joke,\" says Nesteroff. \"'My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York, but we had a little real estate problem.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/545t5SvcyDo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the mid-1970s, Hill was hot on the Los Angeles stand-up circuit. He worked clubs on the Sunset Strip along with Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Walker. He also appeared on \"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,\" the ultimate anointment for a comic during that period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill's act tackled the absurd stereotype that Native Americans aren’t funny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11882635\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-800x938.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"938\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11882635\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-800x938.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-1020x1196.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-160x188.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comedian Charlie Hill. \u003ccite>(Photo courtesy Nasbah Hill)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"You know, a lot of you white people never seen an Indian do stand-up comedy before,\" said Hill in a 1977 appearance on the Richard Pryor Show. \"Like, for so long you probably thought Indians never had a sense of humor. We never thought you were too funny either.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill died in 2013, without ever reaching stardom and still doing his real estate joke. But his unique stature in the comedy world of four decades ago shows young Native comics and writers that taking their skills to Hollywood is not impossible. To this day, he’s still the only Native American comic to have made it to \"The Tonight Show.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Nesteroff’s book is named for Hill’s signature joke, the subtitle is no punchline: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy. Nesteroff says the stereotype of the stoic Native American was a dehumanizing tactic. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It helped to justify federal policy that subjugated Native Americans,\" he says. \"They're unsmiling. They're unfeeling. And if somebody doesn't have feelings, it doesn't matter what you do to them.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nesteroff’s past work is meticulous and deeply researched, but this book came with a particular challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a very delicate situation being a non-Native author, diving into the realm of Indigenous studies of any kind,\" he says. \"There's a long history and a huge stigma of racist anthropology, of racist historians studying Native Americans like they’re an amoeba under a microscope. What I really tried to do was to let people speak for themselves.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11882675\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 843px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"843\" height=\"591\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11882675\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut.jpg 843w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut-800x561.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut-160x112.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 843px) 100vw, 843px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Kliph Nesteroff, whose new book, \"We Had a Little Real Estate Problem,\" examines the history of Native Americans in comedy.\u003cbr> \u003ccite>(Jim Herrington)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of those people is comedian and writer \u003ca href=\"http://www.joeyclift.com/\">Joey Clift\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There's definitely a stereotype of the stoic Indian who's best friends with an eagle, and flute music plays whenever they're pontificating about whatever,\" says Clift. \"That's just not reality. Some of us are stoic. Some of us are also real funny.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clift is a member of the Cowlitz Tribe and was raised on the Tulalip reservation just north of Seattle. He says the misconceptions about Native Americans aren’t confined to simply determining who’s funny or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I've had grown adults who went to college, live in Los Angeles, work in comedy—ask me if I was born in a teepee, if my reservation had electricity growing up,\" says Clift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clift is quick to point out that he was born in a hospital, and he grew up with not only electricity, but with a television set. He spent hours in front of it, soaking up \"The Simpsons,\" \"Family Guy\" and \"Late Night with Conan O’Brien.\" He saw his future in those shows, but how to make it happen — that was the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Because I didn't necessarily see any Native American comedians on TV growing up, I didn't think I was allowed to work in comedy,\" he says. \"So, instead I went to school for what to me was the next best thing, which was to be a small market TV weather guy.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s exactly what he became, but it wasn’t enough. In 2010, at the urging of his college professors, Clift decided to take a stab at a life beyond predicting sunny skies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When I moved to LA, one of the first things that I did was just Google Native American TV writers or Native American comedians and see if anything came up.\" \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It did and Clift ended up at a Writers Guild diversity event that changed his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There was one Native American writer on the panel,\" Clift recalls. \"And he very quickly introduced me to Native Hollywood, the loose collection of Native people working in the entertainment industry.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clift started doing stand-up in L.A. clubs. In 2018, he created the annual Native American Comedy Showcase for the Hollywood sketch comedy group Upright Citizens Brigade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s currently writing for the animated Netflix series \"Spirit Rangers,\" created by Native American showrunner Karissa Valencia. The show’s entirely Native American writing staff is a Hollywood first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Because I’ve been featured in this book, there are a lot of younger, up-and-coming Native comedians who have reached out to me and said, 'Hey, I read your chapter in Kliph’s book, it really resonated with me. We should do a Zoom and talk. And can you give me any advice?' says Clift. \"I think that it's a really good Bat-Signal for Native comedy, letting Native comedians know that we exist.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Native Americans getting a legitimate foothold in show business — on and offscreen — is still new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's a history of casting non-Native actors in native roles in Hollywood. Anthony Quinn, Charles Bronson, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn, Johnny Depp, Burt Reynolds, Boris Karloff and Elvis Presley all portrayed Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might also recognize the late actor Iron Eyes Cody from the character he played known as \"the Crying Indian\" from a famous 1970s public service announcement on littering. He had a tear running down his cheek as he witnessed America being consumed by garbage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In real life, Cody was an Italian American named Espera de Corti, who made a career wearing an eagle feather headdress. He posed as a Native in over 100 films, and maintained that identity offscreen, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/h0sxwGlTLWw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the better part of a century, Hollywood has gone out of its way to not only exclude Native Americans from serious acting roles, but to create and perpetuate negative stereotypes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Westerns were among the first movies ever made,\" Nesteroff says. \"And by the year 1911, a contingent of Indigenous leaders were already registering formal complaints with the White House saying, 'Can you do something to stop the spread of racist misinformation appearing in silent movies?'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those requests went ignored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11882633\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11882633\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-160x200.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stand up comic, writer and actor Adrianne Chalepah, a featured voice in Kliph Nesteroff's new book.\u003cbr> \u003ccite>(Matthew Williamson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"The stoic Indian is my favorite stereotype because there's nothing further from the truth,\" says comic \u003ca href=\"http://chalepah.com/\">Adrianne Chalepah\u003c/a>. She’s featured in Nesteroff’s book, and grew up on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in Oklahoma. As a kid, her father turned her on to Monty Python, Cheech & Chong and Mel Brooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I grew up in a very humorous family,\" she says. \"You can't go five minutes without someone making fun of someone. You know, culture’s cool, language is cool, tribal stuff is all cool, but humor is the foundation. That is what keeps us just thriving. Because without that humor? Man, you know, things get really dark.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After college, she was working a straight job at a bank when she finally decided to try stand-up in her early twenties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It was a huge risk because I was actually about six months pregnant with my second child,\" says the mother of four. \"But the way that I looked at it is, it can't be any worse than what I've already been through. Because I grew up in so much poverty that, worst case scenario, I would tuck my tail between my legs and go live with my mom in a trailer park.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That didn’t happen. Chalepah moved to Albuquerque, maneuvering her comedy career around her young sons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She gigged at tribal communities all over the country, from nighttime outdoor shows lit by car headlights to reservation casino stages. Pre-coronavirus, she was averaging four jobs a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I chased every stage, every opportunity. I had no ego and no pride in the matter. If they were like, 'Okay, you get five minutes in front of people who hate you,' I would've been like, great, I'll be there.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, unlike Joey Clift, who came to Hollywood to carve out a career, Chalepah stayed away from the belly of the beast. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My opinion of the industry is that it is elitist because it's a pay-to-play thing,\" she explains. \"You’ve got to pay for training. You’ve got to pay for headshots. You’ve got to pay to live in LA. It's expensive. And then what ends up happening is you exclude middle America, and specifically the Natives on reservations get completely excluded because the idea is, 'No, you have to come to us.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the pandemic drags on, Chalepah is taking care of her kids and focusing on acting. The stand-up gigs are dead on the vine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still a struggle for Natives in Hollywood, but she says Nesteroff’s book is a positive step.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Really, my hope is that it will just open doors to more comedians, or at least let industry folks know that we're not a relic or we're not an antique. We have iPhones. We're not stoic.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Author Kliph Nesteroff has written about comedy for years. His new book, \"We Had a Little Real Estate Problem,\" takes a look at Native American comedians — a community that's been misunderstood, stereotyped and often erased in Hollywood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book's title is the punchline of a famous joke from pioneering Native American stand-up comedian, Charlie Hill, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"That was the crux of his joke,\" says Nesteroff. \"'My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York, but we had a little real estate problem.'\"\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/545t5SvcyDo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/545t5SvcyDo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the mid-1970s, Hill was hot on the Los Angeles stand-up circuit. He worked clubs on the Sunset Strip along with Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Walker. He also appeared on \"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,\" the ultimate anointment for a comic during that period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill's act tackled the absurd stereotype that Native Americans aren’t funny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11882635\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-800x938.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"938\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11882635\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-800x938.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-1020x1196.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut-160x188.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49634_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_18_8ACharlieHillheadshot-2-qut.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comedian Charlie Hill. \u003ccite>(Photo courtesy Nasbah Hill)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"You know, a lot of you white people never seen an Indian do stand-up comedy before,\" said Hill in a 1977 appearance on the Richard Pryor Show. \"Like, for so long you probably thought Indians never had a sense of humor. We never thought you were too funny either.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill died in 2013, without ever reaching stardom and still doing his real estate joke. But his unique stature in the comedy world of four decades ago shows young Native comics and writers that taking their skills to Hollywood is not impossible. To this day, he’s still the only Native American comic to have made it to \"The Tonight Show.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Nesteroff’s book is named for Hill’s signature joke, the subtitle is no punchline: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy. Nesteroff says the stereotype of the stoic Native American was a dehumanizing tactic. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It helped to justify federal policy that subjugated Native Americans,\" he says. \"They're unsmiling. They're unfeeling. And if somebody doesn't have feelings, it doesn't matter what you do to them.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nesteroff’s past work is meticulous and deeply researched, but this book came with a particular challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a very delicate situation being a non-Native author, diving into the realm of Indigenous studies of any kind,\" he says. \"There's a long history and a huge stigma of racist anthropology, of racist historians studying Native Americans like they’re an amoeba under a microscope. What I really tried to do was to let people speak for themselves.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11882675\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 843px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"843\" height=\"591\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11882675\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut.jpg 843w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut-800x561.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49635_Kliph-Nesteroff-credit-Jim-Herrington-qut-160x112.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 843px) 100vw, 843px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Kliph Nesteroff, whose new book, \"We Had a Little Real Estate Problem,\" examines the history of Native Americans in comedy.\u003cbr> \u003ccite>(Jim Herrington)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of those people is comedian and writer \u003ca href=\"http://www.joeyclift.com/\">Joey Clift\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There's definitely a stereotype of the stoic Indian who's best friends with an eagle, and flute music plays whenever they're pontificating about whatever,\" says Clift. \"That's just not reality. Some of us are stoic. Some of us are also real funny.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clift is a member of the Cowlitz Tribe and was raised on the Tulalip reservation just north of Seattle. He says the misconceptions about Native Americans aren’t confined to simply determining who’s funny or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I've had grown adults who went to college, live in Los Angeles, work in comedy—ask me if I was born in a teepee, if my reservation had electricity growing up,\" says Clift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clift is quick to point out that he was born in a hospital, and he grew up with not only electricity, but with a television set. He spent hours in front of it, soaking up \"The Simpsons,\" \"Family Guy\" and \"Late Night with Conan O’Brien.\" He saw his future in those shows, but how to make it happen — that was the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Because I didn't necessarily see any Native American comedians on TV growing up, I didn't think I was allowed to work in comedy,\" he says. \"So, instead I went to school for what to me was the next best thing, which was to be a small market TV weather guy.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s exactly what he became, but it wasn’t enough. In 2010, at the urging of his college professors, Clift decided to take a stab at a life beyond predicting sunny skies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When I moved to LA, one of the first things that I did was just Google Native American TV writers or Native American comedians and see if anything came up.\" \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It did and Clift ended up at a Writers Guild diversity event that changed his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There was one Native American writer on the panel,\" Clift recalls. \"And he very quickly introduced me to Native Hollywood, the loose collection of Native people working in the entertainment industry.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clift started doing stand-up in L.A. clubs. In 2018, he created the annual Native American Comedy Showcase for the Hollywood sketch comedy group Upright Citizens Brigade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s currently writing for the animated Netflix series \"Spirit Rangers,\" created by Native American showrunner Karissa Valencia. The show’s entirely Native American writing staff is a Hollywood first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Because I’ve been featured in this book, there are a lot of younger, up-and-coming Native comedians who have reached out to me and said, 'Hey, I read your chapter in Kliph’s book, it really resonated with me. We should do a Zoom and talk. And can you give me any advice?' says Clift. \"I think that it's a really good Bat-Signal for Native comedy, letting Native comedians know that we exist.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Native Americans getting a legitimate foothold in show business — on and offscreen — is still new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's a history of casting non-Native actors in native roles in Hollywood. Anthony Quinn, Charles Bronson, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn, Johnny Depp, Burt Reynolds, Boris Karloff and Elvis Presley all portrayed Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might also recognize the late actor Iron Eyes Cody from the character he played known as \"the Crying Indian\" from a famous 1970s public service announcement on littering. He had a tear running down his cheek as he witnessed America being consumed by garbage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In real life, Cody was an Italian American named Espera de Corti, who made a career wearing an eagle feather headdress. He posed as a Native in over 100 films, and maintained that identity offscreen, too.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/h0sxwGlTLWw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/h0sxwGlTLWw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>For the better part of a century, Hollywood has gone out of its way to not only exclude Native Americans from serious acting roles, but to create and perpetuate negative stereotypes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Westerns were among the first movies ever made,\" Nesteroff says. \"And by the year 1911, a contingent of Indigenous leaders were already registering formal complaints with the White House saying, 'Can you do something to stop the spread of racist misinformation appearing in silent movies?'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those requests went ignored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11882633\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11882633\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-160x200.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/RS49631_WeHadaLittleRealEstateProblem_INS1_29_13AAdrianneChalepahjpg-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stand up comic, writer and actor Adrianne Chalepah, a featured voice in Kliph Nesteroff's new book.\u003cbr> \u003ccite>(Matthew Williamson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"The stoic Indian is my favorite stereotype because there's nothing further from the truth,\" says comic \u003ca href=\"http://chalepah.com/\">Adrianne Chalepah\u003c/a>. She’s featured in Nesteroff’s book, and grew up on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in Oklahoma. As a kid, her father turned her on to Monty Python, Cheech & Chong and Mel Brooks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I grew up in a very humorous family,\" she says. \"You can't go five minutes without someone making fun of someone. You know, culture’s cool, language is cool, tribal stuff is all cool, but humor is the foundation. That is what keeps us just thriving. Because without that humor? Man, you know, things get really dark.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After college, she was working a straight job at a bank when she finally decided to try stand-up in her early twenties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It was a huge risk because I was actually about six months pregnant with my second child,\" says the mother of four. \"But the way that I looked at it is, it can't be any worse than what I've already been through. Because I grew up in so much poverty that, worst case scenario, I would tuck my tail between my legs and go live with my mom in a trailer park.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That didn’t happen. Chalepah moved to Albuquerque, maneuvering her comedy career around her young sons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She gigged at tribal communities all over the country, from nighttime outdoor shows lit by car headlights to reservation casino stages. Pre-coronavirus, she was averaging four jobs a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I chased every stage, every opportunity. I had no ego and no pride in the matter. If they were like, 'Okay, you get five minutes in front of people who hate you,' I would've been like, great, I'll be there.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, unlike Joey Clift, who came to Hollywood to carve out a career, Chalepah stayed away from the belly of the beast. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My opinion of the industry is that it is elitist because it's a pay-to-play thing,\" she explains. \"You’ve got to pay for training. You’ve got to pay for headshots. You’ve got to pay to live in LA. It's expensive. And then what ends up happening is you exclude middle America, and specifically the Natives on reservations get completely excluded because the idea is, 'No, you have to come to us.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the pandemic drags on, Chalepah is taking care of her kids and focusing on acting. The stand-up gigs are dead on the vine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still a struggle for Natives in Hollywood, but she says Nesteroff’s book is a positive step.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Really, my hope is that it will just open doors to more comedians, or at least let industry folks know that we're not a relic or we're not an antique. We have iPhones. We're not stoic.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "the-cant-stand-up-comedian-dan-smith-on-finding-comedy-in-spina-bifida",
"title": "The 'Can't-Stand-Up Comedian': Dan Smith on Finding Comedy in Spina Bifida",
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"headTitle": "The ‘Can’t-Stand-Up Comedian’: Dan Smith on Finding Comedy in Spina Bifida | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>For Dan Smith, mundane everyday chores can become fodder for his next comedy routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a warm January day, Smith tackled the usual domestic challenges at his home in Sacramento. He began by taking out the trash, groaning while gripping the heavy bin as it rolled down his steep driveway, dragging him behind it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s taking out the trash can of terror,” he deadpanned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, Smith grabbed a leash to walk his dog Kepi around the block. A “walk and roll,” he called it. “[Kepi’s] walking, I’m rolling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith, who has used a wheelchair since birth, has coined phrases like this for nearly each part of his day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’ve got to keep things fun,” he explained. “Laughter is what’s kept me sane through a lot of things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down entertainment venues around the state, Smith had become a regular at comedy joints around the Sacramento area. Nearly once a week, a group of comics would hoist Smith on stage at a local club called \u003ca href=\"https://www.punchlinesac.com/\">Punch Line Sacramento\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Thanks for coming to the stand-up comedy show,” Smith began one such set. “I’ll be your can’t-stand-up-comedian for the night.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS7-dR8znvY&t=82s&ab_channel=KQEDArts\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith has spina bifida, a birth defect that occurs when the spine and spinal cord don’t develop properly in utero. Smith was born with an opening in his back, which required surgery when he was just eight days old to close. His form of spina bifida, myelomeningocele, is the most severe. After all, as Smith likes to joke, “if you’re going to commit to something, go all the way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Dan Smith, stand-up comedian\"]‘There’s not much that makes me happier than to be able to make someone laugh.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith makes light of his disability now, but he remembers a shy childhood without many friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I obviously knew what was different about me,” Smith said. “Even if other people didn’t make a big deal out of it, I still knew it was there and felt like I didn’t really fit in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Smith knew he loved to laugh — and make people laugh. Comedy was always in the back of his mind, but being in the spotlight? At first, it wasn’t for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Getting up on stage in front of a room full of people and being the center of attention? No. Absolutely not,” he said of his initial reaction to the idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11837699\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11837699\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dan Smith said it took years for him to gain the confidence to get on stage. "I wasn't ready in my mind," he said.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dan Smith said it took years for him to gain the confidence to get on stage. “I wasn’t ready in my mind,” he said. \u003ccite>(Aine Henderson / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Smith’s confidence posed one obstacle, but his health presented another challenge entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The early part of the 2010s was really bad for me,” he said. ” I had a lot of health problems and some personal problems. Being in and out of the hospital a couple of times a year, that’ll get to you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith’s string of hospital visits lasted roughly five years. During that time, one thing that boosted his spirits was the work of Michael O’Connell, another Sacramento-based comedian who used a wheelchair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I met him a few times. He actually visited me in the hospital, which I really appreciated,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Smith and O’Connell didn’t share the same disability, Smith saw a kindred spirit in O’Connell — someone who could relate to the hardships he’d experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I looked up to him,” said Smith. “Here was a person with a disability doing comedy, and doing well at it. I thought, ‘Hey, if he can do it, I’d like to try it sometime, too.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>O’Connell’s death in 2016 left an indelible mark on Smith. “It really affected me,” he remembered. “I felt like I lost someone that I looked up to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon after, Smith decided it was time to pick up comedy as a way to honor him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It took a lot of years for me to realize that, hey, I’ve got some good stories,” he said. “And I want to share ‘em.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Entering the Spotlight\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Since starting stand-up in 2016, Smith has devoted each set to highlighting life with a disability. He talks about what he calls “the perks of paraplegia” as well as the microaggressions he faces on a daily basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ll tell you that the biggest middle finger in all of society to people in wheelchairs specifically … it’s outside of every elevator,” Smith joked during a comedy set. “‘In case of fire, use stairs.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11837701\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11837701\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dan Smith has his logo tattooed onto his arm: a person falling out of a wheelchair while holding a microphone.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dan Smith has his logo tattooed onto his arm: a person falling out of a wheelchair while holding a microphone. \u003ccite>(Aine Henderson / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Smith does not intend to speak on behalf of all people with disabilities, nor does he want to be labelled as “inspirational” just because he uses a wheelchair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Inspirational is a four letter word for people with a disability,” he said. “We’re not trying to be inspirational, we’re just trying to live our lives. I’ll incorporate my disability into universal topics, like marriage and my sobriety.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time of our interview, Smith had been sober for exactly nine months and four days. He marked his 90th day with a tattoo on his forearm, and he tracks his progress using an app on his phone. Smith recalled that when he was younger, drinking was a way to help fit in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t drink every day, but when I did drink I couldn’t stop until I passed out,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I did a few sets when I was drunk. There was one set I don’t remember at all. I was told that I got onstage and told one joke. Then I spent the next five minutes going in circles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith bombed so hard that he vowed to never waste an opportunity on stage again. Now, he proudly broadcasts his sobriety, even incorporating it into his routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I quit drinking this last year,” Smith announced to a cheering audience. “But I’ll tell you, it’s just impossible to find a wheelchair accessible 12-step program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith says his comedy work is a kind of therapy for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You joke about the things that you’re struggling with,” he said. “That’s comedy. It’s turning tragedy into comedy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Stand-Up in the Time of COVID-19\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>One topic, however, that’s been difficult to turn into comedy is the COVID-19 crisis, said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is immunocompromised and said that he’s had some difficult days emotionally. He’s attempted comedy sets over Zoom, but it’s tricky, without direct audience feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But most of all, Smith said he misses his fellow comedians who made him laugh week after week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I miss the hell out of them,” he said. “I miss hugs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11837704\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11837704 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-800x452.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-800x452.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-1020x576.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130.png 1222w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smith hosted the first-ever “body posi” comedy night on Zoom in March 2020.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In May, Smith emceed a body positive themed comedy night over Zoom. Many of his fellow comedians from the Sacramento comedy scene were in attendance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Welcome to the first ever ‘body posi’ show,” Smith announced through the screen. “Tonight we’re celebrating positivity in everybody and every body.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the course of the night, comedians discussed everything from fatphobia to gender norms. As the emcee, Smith placed a homemade banner behind him and wore a t-shirt that said “I run better than the government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also tested out some new material — about those everyday, mundane chores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have one of those top-down washing machines, so I have to lift myself over the side to reach [clothes] at the bottom,” he said during his set. “Last week I was flipping my laundry. I fell in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith doesn’t get paid much to do comedy, but he considers the laughter of a room full of people his payment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It feels like I gave them something,” he said. “There’s not much that makes me happier than to be able to make someone laugh.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "The 'Can't-Stand-Up Comedian': Dan Smith on Finding Comedy in Spina Bifida | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For Dan Smith, mundane everyday chores can become fodder for his next comedy routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a warm January day, Smith tackled the usual domestic challenges at his home in Sacramento. He began by taking out the trash, groaning while gripping the heavy bin as it rolled down his steep driveway, dragging him behind it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s taking out the trash can of terror,” he deadpanned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, Smith grabbed a leash to walk his dog Kepi around the block. A “walk and roll,” he called it. “[Kepi’s] walking, I’m rolling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith, who has used a wheelchair since birth, has coined phrases like this for nearly each part of his day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’ve got to keep things fun,” he explained. “Laughter is what’s kept me sane through a lot of things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down entertainment venues around the state, Smith had become a regular at comedy joints around the Sacramento area. Nearly once a week, a group of comics would hoist Smith on stage at a local club called \u003ca href=\"https://www.punchlinesac.com/\">Punch Line Sacramento\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Thanks for coming to the stand-up comedy show,” Smith began one such set. “I’ll be your can’t-stand-up-comedian for the night.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/XS7-dR8znvY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/XS7-dR8znvY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Smith has spina bifida, a birth defect that occurs when the spine and spinal cord don’t develop properly in utero. Smith was born with an opening in his back, which required surgery when he was just eight days old to close. His form of spina bifida, myelomeningocele, is the most severe. After all, as Smith likes to joke, “if you’re going to commit to something, go all the way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith makes light of his disability now, but he remembers a shy childhood without many friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I obviously knew what was different about me,” Smith said. “Even if other people didn’t make a big deal out of it, I still knew it was there and felt like I didn’t really fit in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Smith knew he loved to laugh — and make people laugh. Comedy was always in the back of his mind, but being in the spotlight? At first, it wasn’t for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Getting up on stage in front of a room full of people and being the center of attention? No. Absolutely not,” he said of his initial reaction to the idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11837699\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11837699\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dan Smith said it took years for him to gain the confidence to get on stage. "I wasn't ready in my mind," he said.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_closeup_ColorCorrected.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dan Smith said it took years for him to gain the confidence to get on stage. “I wasn’t ready in my mind,” he said. \u003ccite>(Aine Henderson / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Smith’s confidence posed one obstacle, but his health presented another challenge entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The early part of the 2010s was really bad for me,” he said. ” I had a lot of health problems and some personal problems. Being in and out of the hospital a couple of times a year, that’ll get to you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith’s string of hospital visits lasted roughly five years. During that time, one thing that boosted his spirits was the work of Michael O’Connell, another Sacramento-based comedian who used a wheelchair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I met him a few times. He actually visited me in the hospital, which I really appreciated,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Smith and O’Connell didn’t share the same disability, Smith saw a kindred spirit in O’Connell — someone who could relate to the hardships he’d experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I looked up to him,” said Smith. “Here was a person with a disability doing comedy, and doing well at it. I thought, ‘Hey, if he can do it, I’d like to try it sometime, too.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>O’Connell’s death in 2016 left an indelible mark on Smith. “It really affected me,” he remembered. “I felt like I lost someone that I looked up to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon after, Smith decided it was time to pick up comedy as a way to honor him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It took a lot of years for me to realize that, hey, I’ve got some good stories,” he said. “And I want to share ‘em.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Entering the Spotlight\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Since starting stand-up in 2016, Smith has devoted each set to highlighting life with a disability. He talks about what he calls “the perks of paraplegia” as well as the microaggressions he faces on a daily basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ll tell you that the biggest middle finger in all of society to people in wheelchairs specifically … it’s outside of every elevator,” Smith joked during a comedy set. “‘In case of fire, use stairs.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11837701\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11837701\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dan Smith has his logo tattooed onto his arm: a person falling out of a wheelchair while holding a microphone.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/tca1509_dansmith_tattoo_ColorCorrected.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dan Smith has his logo tattooed onto his arm: a person falling out of a wheelchair while holding a microphone. \u003ccite>(Aine Henderson / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Smith does not intend to speak on behalf of all people with disabilities, nor does he want to be labelled as “inspirational” just because he uses a wheelchair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Inspirational is a four letter word for people with a disability,” he said. “We’re not trying to be inspirational, we’re just trying to live our lives. I’ll incorporate my disability into universal topics, like marriage and my sobriety.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time of our interview, Smith had been sober for exactly nine months and four days. He marked his 90th day with a tattoo on his forearm, and he tracks his progress using an app on his phone. Smith recalled that when he was younger, drinking was a way to help fit in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t drink every day, but when I did drink I couldn’t stop until I passed out,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I did a few sets when I was drunk. There was one set I don’t remember at all. I was told that I got onstage and told one joke. Then I spent the next five minutes going in circles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith bombed so hard that he vowed to never waste an opportunity on stage again. Now, he proudly broadcasts his sobriety, even incorporating it into his routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I quit drinking this last year,” Smith announced to a cheering audience. “But I’ll tell you, it’s just impossible to find a wheelchair accessible 12-step program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith says his comedy work is a kind of therapy for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You joke about the things that you’re struggling with,” he said. “That’s comedy. It’s turning tragedy into comedy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Stand-Up in the Time of COVID-19\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>One topic, however, that’s been difficult to turn into comedy is the COVID-19 crisis, said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith is immunocompromised and said that he’s had some difficult days emotionally. He’s attempted comedy sets over Zoom, but it’s tricky, without direct audience feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But most of all, Smith said he misses his fellow comedians who made him laugh week after week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I miss the hell out of them,” he said. “I miss hugs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11837704\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11837704 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-800x452.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-800x452.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-1020x576.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-11-at-4.20.08-PM-e1599866560130.png 1222w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smith hosted the first-ever “body posi” comedy night on Zoom in March 2020.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In May, Smith emceed a body positive themed comedy night over Zoom. Many of his fellow comedians from the Sacramento comedy scene were in attendance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Welcome to the first ever ‘body posi’ show,” Smith announced through the screen. “Tonight we’re celebrating positivity in everybody and every body.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the course of the night, comedians discussed everything from fatphobia to gender norms. As the emcee, Smith placed a homemade banner behind him and wore a t-shirt that said “I run better than the government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also tested out some new material — about those everyday, mundane chores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have one of those top-down washing machines, so I have to lift myself over the side to reach [clothes] at the bottom,” he said during his set. “Last week I was flipping my laundry. I fell in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith doesn’t get paid much to do comedy, but he considers the laughter of a room full of people his payment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Here Are Some of Your Best Robin Williams Encounters, Bay Area",
"title": "Here Are Some of Your Best Robin Williams Encounters, Bay Area",
"headTitle": "KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>Comic icon Robin Williams would have turned 69 years old today, on July 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams was a longtime Bay Area resident, who lived with his family for many years in the Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco, and then in Tiburon until \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/13093/robin-williams-beloved-comedian-and-bay-area-resident-dead-at-63\">his death in 2014, at the age of 63\u003c/a>. This meant that, for many in the Bay Area, it wasn't really unusual to run into Williams on the street. Or the store. Or in numerous other unexpected places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/KQEDnews/status/1285621427237003265\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the thing about people's stories of their \"Robin Williams moment\"? They're usually either \u003cem>very\u003c/em> funny, or genuinely heartwarming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked our audiences for their own stories on social media, and were overwhelmed by the response. Here's a short selection of some of the best encounters described for your enjoyment. You can read more of our audience stories on \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/\">this Reddit thread\u003c/a>, or \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/KQEDnews/status/1285621427237003265\">on Twitter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Some of these comments have been lightly edited for length or clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Back in the day I was the kitchen manager at Josie's Cabaret & Juice Joint. Robin Williams occasionally attended some of our performances. One afternoon I answered the reservation phone and the voice on the other end asked me to hold for 'Mr Williams's Executive Assistant.' After several rapid fire voice changes, I was 'transferred' to 'his special secretary' who sounded quite a bit like Mrs Doubtfire. This 'secretary' proceeded to reserve four tickets for Robin Williams and then switched to his regular voice and gave me his credit card information. \u003cstrong>It was only as I hung up that I realized I had just been treated to an exclusive Robin Williams performance.\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysdxe3/\">MSeanF via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"At the 540 Club on Clement around January 2007. Random Thursday at 4pm. I was the only other one in there. He came with Green Apple Books bag in hand, ordered a shot of tequila, tipped a $20. \u003cstrong>I told him 'Death to Smoochy' is my fave movie. He chatted with me for half an hour. Such a sweet man.\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/CrystalPepsi/status/1285623731046555651\">@CrystalPepsi via Twitter\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My dad took me to see a bicycle race in SF when I was very young. I literally bumped into this strange man wearing bright yellow socks that had the nuclear radiation trefoil pattern on them. My dad said 'This is Robin Williams!' and I shook his hand but asked who he was. \u003cstrong>My dad said 'Genie, from \u003cem>Aladdin'\u003c/em> and Robin said 'You will know who I am one day.'\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysf46b/\">frenchvanilla via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11830104\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1900px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11830104\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1900\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda.jpg 1900w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-800x539.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-1020x687.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-160x108.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-1536x1035.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1900px) 100vw, 1900px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robin Williams (R) and his daughter Zelda at a movie premiere in 2006 \u003ccite>(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"He came into a toy store I used to work at in Berkeley with one of his children (a boy), who must have been about three or four at the time (this was around 1994). \u003cstrong>I wanted to respect his privacy and so didn't speak with him, but did get treated to a special performance when he picked up a furry folk wolf puppet. He went crazy with it entertaining his son, who was absolutely in stitches. It was amazing to watch.\u003c/strong> He was so focused and present with his kid; I imagine it must have been quite an experience to grow up with him as a father. He ended up buying the wolf puppet, which I assume went on to an illustrious career at the Williams household.\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysje99/\">thefinancethrowaway via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Living in the Bay Area in the mid ‘80s, just one of a variety of jobs I had was doing balloon deliveries, and the most memorable one ever involved, you got it — Robin Williams. So picture this: there I was ... full clown regalia, colorful costume, clown wig, full face paint, all done up to deliver a birthday balloon bouquet to an office in San Francisco. When the person wasn’t there I left the bouquet with the receptionist ... Feeling a bit dejected, I got on the elevator: it went down one floor, the door opens and who gets in but Robin Williams. Phew! And in that split second when I saw him, I decided he deserved to be a private person and not just a celebrity, and chose not to say anything to him... \u003cstrong>So there I was in this elevator, full clown outfit, with Robin Williams (and damn, he was cute!) and I hear someone ask me if I was a clown and he answers 'No she’s a lawyer, we’re all clowns.'\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysqzwc/\">tallinnigirl via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In the '80s I was working as a waitress at Churchill’s on 6th & Clement. On break with friends from the Last Day Saloon, sitting on the bench outside the Holy City Zoo. \u003cstrong>He came up and did this whole riff about my clogs. Ended up drinking out of one. I worked with a wet shoe.\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>—\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/erinpoh/status/1285638894554423298\">\u003cstrong>@ErinPoh via Twitter\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I hosted a LAN party as part of a Thanksgiving Day celebration at his San Francisco home. \u003cstrong>He was joined in Unreal Arena by his kids and David Crosby while Sharon Stone watched.\u003c/strong> He checked on all the people running games and booths a few times to make sure we were warm and fed. I had a few games available and once he finished blowing up his kids in an Unreal Dungeon, he and David Crosby picked up a WWII air combat flight simulator. I was watching them dogfight when a woman's voice said 'What is going on here?!' and it was Sharon Stone and Phil Bronstein.\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysjyra/\">rhbaby via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[ad fullwidth]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My parents's favorite story from when they lived in SF in the 80s: One night, they run into a man with a beautiful golden retriever. Dad of course wants to pet the dog. Stranger waits politely until he’s done. Nobody says anything. \u003cstrong>Turns out to be Robin Williams walking his dog. My dad never looked up from the dog he was petting.\u003c/strong> He had no idea who they had run into until my mom told him later. To this day, his defense is, 'Robin Williams had a very nice dog.'' \u003cstrong>—\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/magmokno/status/1285732574955012099\">\u003cstrong>@magmokno via Twitter\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I was eating at The Cheesesteak Shop back in the day with my family and we noticed Robin Williams was with his son at a nearby table. We were ecstatic but didn’t want to bother him. My brother was a little kid and ended up falling asleep at the table. \u003cstrong>When Robin noticed this he brought over a chair from his table and set it next to my brother’s chair so he could sleep more comfortably lying down. It was such a kind and thoughtful gesture.\u003c/strong> We already loved him as an actor but loved him for his sweet caring soul too after that.\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysutkg/\">JLittle16 via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you're craving even \u003cem>more\u003c/em> Robin Williams stories, Broke Ass Stuart has \u003ca href=\"https://brokeassstuart.com/2014/08/12/grieving-sf-comedy-superstars-recall-their-robin-williams-stories/\">this great roundup of memories\u003c/a> from his fellow Bay Area comics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We'll leave you with this tweet from Williams's daughter Zelda, who informed Twitter of how she'd be honoring her dad's 69th birthday today. It might inspire you, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/zeldawilliams/status/1285649335917719559\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Many Bay Area residents have a story about their 'Robin Williams encounter.' Here are some of the tales we enjoyed most.",
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"description": "Robin Williams would have turned 69 today, and many Bay Area residents have a story about their "Robin Williams encounter."",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Comic icon Robin Williams would have turned 69 years old today, on July 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams was a longtime Bay Area resident, who lived with his family for many years in the Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco, and then in Tiburon until \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/13093/robin-williams-beloved-comedian-and-bay-area-resident-dead-at-63\">his death in 2014, at the age of 63\u003c/a>. This meant that, for many in the Bay Area, it wasn't really unusual to run into Williams on the street. Or the store. Or in numerous other unexpected places.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>And the thing about people's stories of their \"Robin Williams moment\"? They're usually either \u003cem>very\u003c/em> funny, or genuinely heartwarming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked our audiences for their own stories on social media, and were overwhelmed by the response. Here's a short selection of some of the best encounters described for your enjoyment. You can read more of our audience stories on \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/\">this Reddit thread\u003c/a>, or \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/KQEDnews/status/1285621427237003265\">on Twitter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Some of these comments have been lightly edited for length or clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Back in the day I was the kitchen manager at Josie's Cabaret & Juice Joint. Robin Williams occasionally attended some of our performances. One afternoon I answered the reservation phone and the voice on the other end asked me to hold for 'Mr Williams's Executive Assistant.' After several rapid fire voice changes, I was 'transferred' to 'his special secretary' who sounded quite a bit like Mrs Doubtfire. This 'secretary' proceeded to reserve four tickets for Robin Williams and then switched to his regular voice and gave me his credit card information. \u003cstrong>It was only as I hung up that I realized I had just been treated to an exclusive Robin Williams performance.\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysdxe3/\">MSeanF via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"At the 540 Club on Clement around January 2007. Random Thursday at 4pm. I was the only other one in there. He came with Green Apple Books bag in hand, ordered a shot of tequila, tipped a $20. \u003cstrong>I told him 'Death to Smoochy' is my fave movie. He chatted with me for half an hour. Such a sweet man.\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/CrystalPepsi/status/1285623731046555651\">@CrystalPepsi via Twitter\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My dad took me to see a bicycle race in SF when I was very young. I literally bumped into this strange man wearing bright yellow socks that had the nuclear radiation trefoil pattern on them. My dad said 'This is Robin Williams!' and I shook his hand but asked who he was. \u003cstrong>My dad said 'Genie, from \u003cem>Aladdin'\u003c/em> and Robin said 'You will know who I am one day.'\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysf46b/\">frenchvanilla via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11830104\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1900px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11830104\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1900\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda.jpg 1900w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-800x539.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-1020x687.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-160x108.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/zelda-1536x1035.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1900px) 100vw, 1900px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robin Williams (R) and his daughter Zelda at a movie premiere in 2006 \u003ccite>(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"He came into a toy store I used to work at in Berkeley with one of his children (a boy), who must have been about three or four at the time (this was around 1994). \u003cstrong>I wanted to respect his privacy and so didn't speak with him, but did get treated to a special performance when he picked up a furry folk wolf puppet. He went crazy with it entertaining his son, who was absolutely in stitches. It was amazing to watch.\u003c/strong> He was so focused and present with his kid; I imagine it must have been quite an experience to grow up with him as a father. He ended up buying the wolf puppet, which I assume went on to an illustrious career at the Williams household.\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysje99/\">thefinancethrowaway via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Living in the Bay Area in the mid ‘80s, just one of a variety of jobs I had was doing balloon deliveries, and the most memorable one ever involved, you got it — Robin Williams. So picture this: there I was ... full clown regalia, colorful costume, clown wig, full face paint, all done up to deliver a birthday balloon bouquet to an office in San Francisco. When the person wasn’t there I left the bouquet with the receptionist ... Feeling a bit dejected, I got on the elevator: it went down one floor, the door opens and who gets in but Robin Williams. Phew! And in that split second when I saw him, I decided he deserved to be a private person and not just a celebrity, and chose not to say anything to him... \u003cstrong>So there I was in this elevator, full clown outfit, with Robin Williams (and damn, he was cute!) and I hear someone ask me if I was a clown and he answers 'No she’s a lawyer, we’re all clowns.'\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysqzwc/\">tallinnigirl via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In the '80s I was working as a waitress at Churchill’s on 6th & Clement. On break with friends from the Last Day Saloon, sitting on the bench outside the Holy City Zoo. \u003cstrong>He came up and did this whole riff about my clogs. Ended up drinking out of one. I worked with a wet shoe.\u003c/strong>\" \u003cstrong>—\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/erinpoh/status/1285638894554423298\">\u003cstrong>@ErinPoh via Twitter\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I hosted a LAN party as part of a Thanksgiving Day celebration at his San Francisco home. \u003cstrong>He was joined in Unreal Arena by his kids and David Crosby while Sharon Stone watched.\u003c/strong> He checked on all the people running games and booths a few times to make sure we were warm and fed. I had a few games available and once he finished blowing up his kids in an Unreal Dungeon, he and David Crosby picked up a WWII air combat flight simulator. I was watching them dogfight when a woman's voice said 'What is going on here?!' and it was Sharon Stone and Phil Bronstein.\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysjyra/\">rhbaby via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My parents's favorite story from when they lived in SF in the 80s: One night, they run into a man with a beautiful golden retriever. Dad of course wants to pet the dog. Stranger waits politely until he’s done. Nobody says anything. \u003cstrong>Turns out to be Robin Williams walking his dog. My dad never looked up from the dog he was petting.\u003c/strong> He had no idea who they had run into until my mom told him later. To this day, his defense is, 'Robin Williams had a very nice dog.'' \u003cstrong>—\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/magmokno/status/1285732574955012099\">\u003cstrong>@magmokno via Twitter\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I was eating at The Cheesesteak Shop back in the day with my family and we noticed Robin Williams was with his son at a nearby table. We were ecstatic but didn’t want to bother him. My brother was a little kid and ended up falling asleep at the table. \u003cstrong>When Robin noticed this he brought over a chair from his table and set it next to my brother’s chair so he could sleep more comfortably lying down. It was such a kind and thoughtful gesture.\u003c/strong> We already loved him as an actor but loved him for his sweet caring soul too after that.\" \u003cstrong>— \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/hvaxzn/happy_birthday_to_robin_williams_19512014_whod/fysutkg/\">JLittle16 via Reddit\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you're craving even \u003cem>more\u003c/em> Robin Williams stories, Broke Ass Stuart has \u003ca href=\"https://brokeassstuart.com/2014/08/12/grieving-sf-comedy-superstars-recall-their-robin-williams-stories/\">this great roundup of memories\u003c/a> from his fellow Bay Area comics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We'll leave you with this tweet from Williams's daughter Zelda, who informed Twitter of how she'd be honoring her dad's 69th birthday today. It might inspire you, too.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Dave Chappelle, W. Kamau Bell Rally in S.F. to Save Punch Line Comedy Club",
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"content": "\u003cp>A group of comedians — including Dave Chappelle and W. Kamau Bell — joined several San Francisco supervisors on the steps of City Hall Tuesday morning for a rally to save the legendary \u003ca href=\"http://www.punchlinecomedyclub.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Punch Line comedy club\u003c/a>.[pullquote align='right' citation='W. Kamau Bell']'If you let the Punch Line go, it's basically a wrap on San Francisco.'[/pullquote]Earlier this month, Punch Line tweeted that \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/punchlinesf/status/1125960660154585089\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the club is facing closure\u003c/a> in August \"after being unable to renew our lease\" at the 444 Battery Street location that has been their home since 1978.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Any historic comedian will tell you, 'The Punch Line is not just a San Francisco phenomenon, it really is like an American phenomenon.' It's one of the premiere comedy clubs in all the country,\" comedian Dave Chappelle told a crowd of about 50 people. \"When I quit my show that room became like a home to me.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For me personally, it’s like a cultural epicenter of the city,\" Chappelle told KQED. \"Every comedy community needs a place like the Punch Line. It’s really sacred ground, it really is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/wkamaubell/status/1130911460077400064\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Punch Line is currently operated by Live Nation and the building is owned by a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Speakers at the rally were quick to point out that it is not a situation of a cash-strapped small business being pushed out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We’re here to tell the story of a group of scrappy Postmates drivers with no health insurance who are also comedians trying to save a club that's owned by a big corporation from displacement by an even bigger corporation,\" said comedian and rally organizer Nato Green. \"Thats the story of San Francisco in 2019.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speculation has grown that the building owners are likely to lease the space to Google once Punch Line's lease ends in August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We’re losing the culture of the city and this is one of the things that defines San Francisco. If you let the Punch Line go, it's basically a wrap on San Francisco,\" said W. Kamau Bell, Bay Area comedian and host of CNN's \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/shows/united-shades-of-america\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">United Shades of America\u003c/a>.\" Bell was a staple at the club early in his career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I don’t know what the city can do, but if they can do something they’d be saving, literally, what I consider a historical landmark,\" Chappelle said. \"For American culture, it’s one of the most important rooms in America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced a series of steps he is taking to attempt to save Punch Line. The first step, taken last Friday, was nominating the club as a legacy business, which would bring financial benefits to Live Nation. Secondly, Peskin — along with Supervisors Hillary Ronen, Sandra Lee Fewer and Ahsha Safaí — plan to introduce an \"interim zoning moratorium\" at the June 4 Board of Supervisors meeting that would prevent the building from being rezoned to any use other than entertainment purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/HillaryRonen/status/1130930237066190848\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lastly, Peskin said the city is \"trying to have reasonable conversations with Morgan Stanley\" and that they'd \"like to do this with honey and not vinegar.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without adding any specific details, Peskin also pleaded directly to the much-speculated future tenant of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I want to say to Google: 'Really, really do no evil.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For rally organizer Green and his fellow comedians, the importance of saving Punch Line is obvious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We need the Punch Line to have a local comedy scene,\" Green said. \"The Punch Line has been a birthplace for comedians for generations, for 40 years, generation after generation ... Without the Punch Line you don’t get Kamau, you don’t get Patton Oswalt or Ali Wong or Margaret Cho.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/katewolffe/status/1130911132879806464\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>KQED’s Kate Wolffe contributed to this report.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Earlier this month, Punch Line tweeted that \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/punchlinesf/status/1125960660154585089\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the club is facing closure\u003c/a> in August \"after being unable to renew our lease\" at the 444 Battery Street location that has been their home since 1978.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Any historic comedian will tell you, 'The Punch Line is not just a San Francisco phenomenon, it really is like an American phenomenon.' It's one of the premiere comedy clubs in all the country,\" comedian Dave Chappelle told a crowd of about 50 people. \"When I quit my show that room became like a home to me.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For me personally, it’s like a cultural epicenter of the city,\" Chappelle told KQED. \"Every comedy community needs a place like the Punch Line. It’s really sacred ground, it really is.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Punch Line is currently operated by Live Nation and the building is owned by a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Speakers at the rally were quick to point out that it is not a situation of a cash-strapped small business being pushed out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We’re here to tell the story of a group of scrappy Postmates drivers with no health insurance who are also comedians trying to save a club that's owned by a big corporation from displacement by an even bigger corporation,\" said comedian and rally organizer Nato Green. \"Thats the story of San Francisco in 2019.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speculation has grown that the building owners are likely to lease the space to Google once Punch Line's lease ends in August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We’re losing the culture of the city and this is one of the things that defines San Francisco. If you let the Punch Line go, it's basically a wrap on San Francisco,\" said W. Kamau Bell, Bay Area comedian and host of CNN's \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/shows/united-shades-of-america\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">United Shades of America\u003c/a>.\" Bell was a staple at the club early in his career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I don’t know what the city can do, but if they can do something they’d be saving, literally, what I consider a historical landmark,\" Chappelle said. \"For American culture, it’s one of the most important rooms in America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced a series of steps he is taking to attempt to save Punch Line. The first step, taken last Friday, was nominating the club as a legacy business, which would bring financial benefits to Live Nation. Secondly, Peskin — along with Supervisors Hillary Ronen, Sandra Lee Fewer and Ahsha Safaí — plan to introduce an \"interim zoning moratorium\" at the June 4 Board of Supervisors meeting that would prevent the building from being rezoned to any use other than entertainment purposes.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Lastly, Peskin said the city is \"trying to have reasonable conversations with Morgan Stanley\" and that they'd \"like to do this with honey and not vinegar.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without adding any specific details, Peskin also pleaded directly to the much-speculated future tenant of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I want to say to Google: 'Really, really do no evil.'\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For rally organizer Green and his fellow comedians, the importance of saving Punch Line is obvious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We need the Punch Line to have a local comedy scene,\" Green said. \"The Punch Line has been a birthplace for comedians for generations, for 40 years, generation after generation ... Without the Punch Line you don’t get Kamau, you don’t get Patton Oswalt or Ali Wong or Margaret Cho.\"\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of “\u003ca href=\"http://annenberg.usc.edu/news/students/usc-annenberg-student-journalists-kqeds-california-report-publish-joint-investigation\">At Risk in the Trump Era\u003c/a>,” a four-month investigation by advanced radio students at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, exploring how vulnerable communities across Southern California have reacted to the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency. The series profiles individuals burdened by new worries — looking for work, registering for school, or even deciding whether to publicly express their sexual orientation or religious affiliation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannaclay/.\">Joanna Clay \u003c/a>brings us the story of Sara Schaefer. She's a comedian who had always tried to avoid jokes about politics. That is, until the 2016 presidential election. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sara Schaefer stands in the back of an East Hollywood pizza parlor, test-driving her material before she takes it out on the road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I legitimately saw my therapist do a little victory dance during therapy recently,\" she tells the crowd. \"I was like, 'I think people are having total mental breakdowns right now. They're so anxious about all the news.' And she was like 'great for business!' And she did a little dance.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Politics have long been fodder for comics: take \u003ca href=\"http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/george-w-bush-cold-open/2953423?snl=1\">Will Ferrell’s President George W. Bush impersonation\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWuc18xISwI\">Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of White House spokesman Sean Spicer on SNL\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For others, like Schaefer, politics might not be a big part of their comedic repertoire. But the current political climate is pushing comics to step into new territory: Trump territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[soundcloud url=\"https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/333938277\" params=\"auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" iframe=\"true\" /]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schaefer is a stand-up comedian and writer for Comedy Central’s \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.cc.com/shows/problematic-with-moshe-kasher\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Problematic\u003c/a>.\" Prior to the election, she’d touch on politics lightly, like encouraging people to vote. But it wasn’t heavy-handed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But come January, that shifted. She wanted to make an impact with her work. Get people to wake up a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Politics are just dominating everything,” she says. “It’s hard not to write about Donald Trump and what’s happening. It's my only option. It's all I think about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schaefer, based in Los Angeles, is known for observational comedy. She talks about personal experience, embarrassing moments, what she sees on TV. But now she’s also pondering alternative facts and the “post-truth” world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sean Spicer apparently has had this long-waged war with Dippin' Dots,” she said. “These are the people in charge. How can you not make fun of this stuff?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"ucXDOA9UrHXX4cCziiC5V02r0XK96TIx\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that doesn’t come without trepidation. Schaefer calls herself a liberal feminist. She knows she may not always share the same views as her audience, especially while touring small towns in the Midwest. And entertaining that audience is priority number one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want to find a way to talk about that stuff that doesn’t make people stop listening or think that I’m getting up there wagging my finger at them,” she says. “I think that doesn’t really work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s trying out her new material with a very specific audience, one she thinks is really pivotal in this moment in time: college students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They're going to be a big, powerful block of change,\" says Schaefer. \"If they equip themselves, they can potentially save us from some of this craziness that we're in.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first few months of Trump’s presidency, she left her safe liberal haven of Los Angeles for universities big and small in Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota, to name a few.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a chance to feel out this new material and find a way to get people to listen -- regardless of their politics -- and not be turned off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a performance earlier this year in Minneapolis, Schaefer tested out a new joke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One thing I’ve also noticed is that there’s been a plethora of articles about Trump voters,” she started out. “We need to understand their feelings, their hopes, their special, special needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"PssluSyBNsi9BXh9NjxR9UgfCGledWQr\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, a moment later, the punch line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I 100 percent think, like face-to-face contact, like kissing and licking and things like that, empathy are all the ways that we're going to get through this mess. The polarized sides need to come together. We need to talk. We need to have real conversations. I am all for that. These articles are all about that,” she said, as the crowd laughed. “And I agree. Just because you voted for Trump doesn’t mean you’re a racist, You might also be a sexist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Abigail Mills, a student in the audience, often feels the political divide in her own family. They're conservative and she’s a liberal lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, joking about those issues, it helps cut the tension for me,” she said, with a laugh.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For others, like Schaefer, politics might not be a big part of their comedic repertoire. But the current political climate is pushing comics to step into new territory: Trump territory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe width='100%' height='500'\n scrolling='no' frameborder='no'\n src='https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/333938277&visual=true&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true'\n title='https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/333938277'>\n \u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schaefer is a stand-up comedian and writer for Comedy Central’s \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.cc.com/shows/problematic-with-moshe-kasher\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Problematic\u003c/a>.\" Prior to the election, she’d touch on politics lightly, like encouraging people to vote. But it wasn’t heavy-handed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But come January, that shifted. She wanted to make an impact with her work. Get people to wake up a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Politics are just dominating everything,” she says. “It’s hard not to write about Donald Trump and what’s happening. It's my only option. It's all I think about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schaefer, based in Los Angeles, is known for observational comedy. She talks about personal experience, embarrassing moments, what she sees on TV. But now she’s also pondering alternative facts and the “post-truth” world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sean Spicer apparently has had this long-waged war with Dippin' Dots,” she said. “These are the people in charge. How can you not make fun of this stuff?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that doesn’t come without trepidation. Schaefer calls herself a liberal feminist. She knows she may not always share the same views as her audience, especially while touring small towns in the Midwest. And entertaining that audience is priority number one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want to find a way to talk about that stuff that doesn’t make people stop listening or think that I’m getting up there wagging my finger at them,” she says. “I think that doesn’t really work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s trying out her new material with a very specific audience, one she thinks is really pivotal in this moment in time: college students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They're going to be a big, powerful block of change,\" says Schaefer. \"If they equip themselves, they can potentially save us from some of this craziness that we're in.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first few months of Trump’s presidency, she left her safe liberal haven of Los Angeles for universities big and small in Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota, to name a few.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a chance to feel out this new material and find a way to get people to listen -- regardless of their politics -- and not be turned off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a performance earlier this year in Minneapolis, Schaefer tested out a new joke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One thing I’ve also noticed is that there’s been a plethora of articles about Trump voters,” she started out. “We need to understand their feelings, their hopes, their special, special needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, a moment later, the punch line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I 100 percent think, like face-to-face contact, like kissing and licking and things like that, empathy are all the ways that we're going to get through this mess. The polarized sides need to come together. We need to talk. We need to have real conversations. I am all for that. These articles are all about that,” she said, as the crowd laughed. “And I agree. Just because you voted for Trump doesn’t mean you’re a racist, You might also be a sexist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Abigail Mills, a student in the audience, often feels the political divide in her own family. They're conservative and she’s a liberal lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, joking about those issues, it helps cut the tension for me,” she said, with a laugh.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Muslim Comics Provide Much More Than Laughs at Fremont's Halal Fest",
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"content": "\u003cp>Actor and comedian Ahmed Ahmed stepped on a makeshift stage under a white tent clutching a microphone. He looked out at his audience, mostly Muslim families from across the Bay Area and Silicon Valley who were sitting expectantly on rows of folding chairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a very Muslim comedy show because we're doing comedy under a tent,\" said Egyptian-born Ahmed, who has performed nationwide and in Middle Eastern countries for more than a decade. \"And we are starting on time. If Egyptians were putting on this thing, we'd be starting ... tomorrow!\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'Without cross-cultural understandings and handshakes, we live in a very divided world.'\u003ccite>Comedian Ahmed Ahmed\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Ahmed, of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5589877\">Axis of Evil\u003c/a> Comedy Tour fame, and the other two prominent comedians in Saturday's lineup -- Ramy Youssef and Reginald Moss aka Preacher Moss -- delighted audiences looking for relief from politically charged times and everyday challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The comics performed at the fifth annual \u003ca href=\"http://halalfest.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Halal Fest\u003c/a> in Fremont last weekend, which featured a variety of food trucks offering dishes prepared according to Islamic guidelines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Youssef, 26, said this was a \"special\" performance because he is often the only Muslim at the bars and other venues where he performs his stand-up. Helping to dispel stereotypes is just part of his gig.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[audio src=\"http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/tcr/2017/07/2017-07-10c-tcr.mp3\" Image=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25953_IMG_0801-qut-800x533.jpg\" Title=\"Muslim Comics Lighten Mood at Fremont Halal Festival\" program=\"The California Report\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people think that Muslims don't laugh, that they are not willing to take a joke,\" said Youssef, chuckling. \"For some it may be true. But for the most part I think we are a group of people who do love to laugh. It’s a big part of our culture.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During Saturday's performance, Youssef and the other comics touched on their personal experiences dealing with policies that have caused tension and anxiety in Muslim communities throughout the U.S., such as President Trump's travel ban.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Youssef told the audience he was \"super upset\" the day the travel ban happened, but that \u003cem>personally\u003c/em> he had a really good day. That's when he was cast for a Taco Bell commercial for fried chicken shell tacos, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And so I'm watching TV and this guy says, 'This is a terrible day for all Muslims,' and I was like, 'Well, not \u003cem>all. ... \u003c/em>It's making my dreams come true,\" said Youssef to laughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then he joked about the taco itself: “The way that it’s fried it’s going to kill more Americans than any refugee could.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11560160\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11560160 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-960x640.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Preacher Moss jokes about having to go twice through security at airports, as a Muslim and as an African-American. \u003ccite>(Farida Jhabvala Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ahmed, 44, tackled what it's like to be stopped frequently at airports, and to be thrown in what he called the \"brown room\" at LAX and JFK, where he said authorities \"detain Arabs and Muslims.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There was a white guy with a tan in the \u003cem>brown\u003c/em> room,\" said Ahmed, who grew up in Southern California. \"I walk by and I was like, 'Are you even supposed to be in here?' He was like, ‘I don’t know man, I was in the sun for too long.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'Hey, we are part of American society. We have fun, too.'\u003ccite>Irfan Rydhan, Halal Fest organizer\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Ahmed said one of his goals as a comedian -- particularly while performing in front of diverse audiences -- is to humanize Muslims while making people of all backgrounds laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I just like to \u003cem>normalize\u003c/em> us,\" he said. \"Cultural diversity is the best. Without cross-cultural understandings and handshakes, we live in a very divided world.'\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11560155\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11560155 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-960x640.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Noni Azhar (right) and his wife, Aiesha (left, in blue) enjoy lamb gyros while awaiting the comedy show at the Halal Fest in Fremont on July 8, 2017. \"With all the stuff happening in the world it's good to laugh,\" said Azhar, who works in IT and lives in San Jose. \"Comedians tackle the world's problems while making people forget some of their challenges.\" \u003ccite>(Farida Jhabvala Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Zainab Burney came from San Ramon to see the show. She said she's been worried over political news recently, but seeing the comedians live on stage helped her feel more positive, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It helps lighten the mood and bring everybody together as a community,\" said Burney, a mom of three. \"If you can’t laugh, you can’t enjoy life, especially in these tumultuous times.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the first year the Halal Fest offered a comedy lineup, said organizer Irfan Rydhan, adding that the festival's popularity has been growing among Muslims and the general public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We want to show another side of Muslims that people don’t see in the news media, and we've been getting a lot of interest,\" said Rydhan, a San Jose native with a day job in construction management. \"We want to show that, 'Hey, we are part of American society. We have fun, too.' ”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Actor and comedian Ahmed Ahmed stepped on a makeshift stage under a white tent clutching a microphone. He looked out at his audience, mostly Muslim families from across the Bay Area and Silicon Valley who were sitting expectantly on rows of folding chairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a very Muslim comedy show because we're doing comedy under a tent,\" said Egyptian-born Ahmed, who has performed nationwide and in Middle Eastern countries for more than a decade. \"And we are starting on time. If Egyptians were putting on this thing, we'd be starting ... tomorrow!\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'Without cross-cultural understandings and handshakes, we live in a very divided world.'\u003ccite>Comedian Ahmed Ahmed\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Ahmed, of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5589877\">Axis of Evil\u003c/a> Comedy Tour fame, and the other two prominent comedians in Saturday's lineup -- Ramy Youssef and Reginald Moss aka Preacher Moss -- delighted audiences looking for relief from politically charged times and everyday challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The comics performed at the fifth annual \u003ca href=\"http://halalfest.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Halal Fest\u003c/a> in Fremont last weekend, which featured a variety of food trucks offering dishes prepared according to Islamic guidelines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Youssef, 26, said this was a \"special\" performance because he is often the only Muslim at the bars and other venues where he performs his stand-up. Helping to dispel stereotypes is just part of his gig.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people think that Muslims don't laugh, that they are not willing to take a joke,\" said Youssef, chuckling. \"For some it may be true. But for the most part I think we are a group of people who do love to laugh. It’s a big part of our culture.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During Saturday's performance, Youssef and the other comics touched on their personal experiences dealing with policies that have caused tension and anxiety in Muslim communities throughout the U.S., such as President Trump's travel ban.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Youssef told the audience he was \"super upset\" the day the travel ban happened, but that \u003cem>personally\u003c/em> he had a really good day. That's when he was cast for a Taco Bell commercial for fried chicken shell tacos, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And so I'm watching TV and this guy says, 'This is a terrible day for all Muslims,' and I was like, 'Well, not \u003cem>all. ... \u003c/em>It's making my dreams come true,\" said Youssef to laughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then he joked about the taco itself: “The way that it’s fried it’s going to kill more Americans than any refugee could.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11560160\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11560160 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-960x640.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25954_IMG_0759-qut-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Preacher Moss jokes about having to go twice through security at airports, as a Muslim and as an African-American. \u003ccite>(Farida Jhabvala Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ahmed, 44, tackled what it's like to be stopped frequently at airports, and to be thrown in what he called the \"brown room\" at LAX and JFK, where he said authorities \"detain Arabs and Muslims.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There was a white guy with a tan in the \u003cem>brown\u003c/em> room,\" said Ahmed, who grew up in Southern California. \"I walk by and I was like, 'Are you even supposed to be in here?' He was like, ‘I don’t know man, I was in the sun for too long.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'Hey, we are part of American society. We have fun, too.'\u003ccite>Irfan Rydhan, Halal Fest organizer\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Ahmed said one of his goals as a comedian -- particularly while performing in front of diverse audiences -- is to humanize Muslims while making people of all backgrounds laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I just like to \u003cem>normalize\u003c/em> us,\" he said. \"Cultural diversity is the best. Without cross-cultural understandings and handshakes, we live in a very divided world.'\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11560155\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11560155 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-960x640.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/RS25955_IMG_0734-qut-1-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Noni Azhar (right) and his wife, Aiesha (left, in blue) enjoy lamb gyros while awaiting the comedy show at the Halal Fest in Fremont on July 8, 2017. \"With all the stuff happening in the world it's good to laugh,\" said Azhar, who works in IT and lives in San Jose. \"Comedians tackle the world's problems while making people forget some of their challenges.\" \u003ccite>(Farida Jhabvala Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Zainab Burney came from San Ramon to see the show. She said she's been worried over political news recently, but seeing the comedians live on stage helped her feel more positive, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It helps lighten the mood and bring everybody together as a community,\" said Burney, a mom of three. \"If you can’t laugh, you can’t enjoy life, especially in these tumultuous times.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the first year the Halal Fest offered a comedy lineup, said organizer Irfan Rydhan, adding that the festival's popularity has been growing among Muslims and the general public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We want to show another side of Muslims that people don’t see in the news media, and we've been getting a lot of interest,\" said Rydhan, a San Jose native with a day job in construction management. \"We want to show that, 'Hey, we are part of American society. We have fun, too.' ”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Comedian and talk show host \u003ca href=\"http://www.wkamaubell.com/\">W. Kamau Bell\u003c/a> has interviewed fully hooded Klansmen in a dark forest at night. But one of his most vulnerable interviews came when he \u003ca href=\"http://longestshortesttime.com/episode-88-w-kamau-bell-asks-his-mom-about-sex/\">talked with his nearly 80-year- old mother\u003c/a> about her sex life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bell’s fame has spread from Bay Area comedy clubs to the national stage with his hit CNN show \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/shows/united-shades-of-america\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“United Shades of America”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> -- where he takes a road trip across the country to explore themes of race, identity and politics.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His new memoir, which came out this month, is called \u003ci>The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6’4” African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian\u003c/i>. He sat down with The California Report Magazine’s host, Sasha Khokha.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights:\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On being black, 6'4\", and not playing basketball:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I tried, but I didn’t play that well. If I had been great at it, it would be a different book. Then it would be an NBA memoir on ‘how I went from poor to now I’m a gillionaire.’ I just met someone who asked, ‘Were you good at basketball, or were you a waste of height?’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On being hip in his 40s:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are the age of the current culture. Every record store you walk into is playing '90s music. The '90s are currently what everybody’s into. Once it becomes like Brittany Spears, that’s when we’re done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On interviewing his nearly 80-year-old mom about her sex life for the parenting podcast \"\u003ca href=\"https://longestshortesttime.com/\">The Longest Shortest Time\"\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I mean, it made me blush. There’s a couple points where I was like, that’s enough, where I cut her off. You’re not supposed to do that in an interview. But it was my mom. It’s funny, a lot of the work I do, people sort of talk about it as something I’m doing for the world, or maybe for my community. It’s really all pretty selfish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I wanted to have that conversation with my mom for a long time because I didn’t know what was going on. We were really close, and there was this one aspect of her life that we hadn’t talked about, her dating life. I sort of had this narrative in my head that my mom was this lonely person.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On being a dad to two mixed-race daughters with different complexions:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While they’re clearly sisters, our youngest daughter is much lighter, her hair is much thinner, it’s not as kinky as her sister's. And we’re like, 'Oh, they’re going to have very different experiences.' My wife is #woke. She’s like, ‘Juno’s going to pass.’ And it’s just like wow. There’s two things there. Sami will probably be exotified by some people. And Juno may not be exotified, but she will be able to get into spaces that Sami won’t be able to get into and hear. We’ll have to have two different manuals [for raising our kids.]”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"PhtNYitSLR3r9FAsvom3hgtV1zRPH3pv\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On staying funny when performing for people with post-election political depression:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have to make sure that the jokes that I’m telling are taking that perspective in, like I’m not talking at you, I’m like, 'I know, I know where we’re all at.'\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I was also heartbroken by the election, so I wasn’t different from the audience. I was actually right there with them. Laughter can sort of help motivate. I don’t want you to be sad. I also know how serious the consequences are. If you stay sad, then we’re not going to win. So, let’s get happy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On interviewing a fully hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan in the woods for his show “United Shades of America\" with a mostly white TV crew:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I kept having to sort of advocate for ‘I need help here,’ that’s a different kind of help than just like, 'What do you need, water?' It’s not that the producers and crew didn’t have my back. They had my physical back but they didn’t have my racial back. Nobody knew how to reach out. Eventually I formed a very deep friendship with them, and now we’re all waking up together. Now they realize, Kamau is actually feeling all this stuff, he’s having a real experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGBooYqU1dg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The guy who runs the show now [in the second season] is a black guy who has a Ph.D. in psychology. And there’s more black and brown faces on the crew. So when we do things that sometimes seem crazy, we have each other’s back physically and emotionally. It’s great to have a crew that you can immediately get into the van when you drive away from the scene and be like, ‘That was crazy!’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On making a podcast called \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/denzel-washington-is-the-greatest-actor-of-all-time-period/id935756902?mt=2\">\"Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time, Period.”\u003c/a> With 118 episodes!\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t realize how many other people out there felt the same way we did. Fans, other actors, people who auditioned for roles in Denzel Washington movies and didn’t get 'em. There’s a lot of talk in Hollywood, 'Tom Hanks is so great,' 'Will Ferrell is so great.' Why aren’t people doing that for Denzel? How come whenever we have the conversation about who the greatest actors are, it’s always the same white dudes? It’s like De Niro, Pacino, Brando, DiCaprio – all the “o” actors. How come Denzel’s not in that conversation?”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Comedian and talk show host \u003ca href=\"http://www.wkamaubell.com/\">W. Kamau Bell\u003c/a> has interviewed fully hooded Klansmen in a dark forest at night. But one of his most vulnerable interviews came when he \u003ca href=\"http://longestshortesttime.com/episode-88-w-kamau-bell-asks-his-mom-about-sex/\">talked with his nearly 80-year- old mother\u003c/a> about her sex life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bell’s fame has spread from Bay Area comedy clubs to the national stage with his hit CNN show \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/shows/united-shades-of-america\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“United Shades of America”\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> -- where he takes a road trip across the country to explore themes of race, identity and politics.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His new memoir, which came out this month, is called \u003ci>The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6’4” African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian\u003c/i>. He sat down with The California Report Magazine’s host, Sasha Khokha.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights:\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On being black, 6'4\", and not playing basketball:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I tried, but I didn’t play that well. If I had been great at it, it would be a different book. Then it would be an NBA memoir on ‘how I went from poor to now I’m a gillionaire.’ I just met someone who asked, ‘Were you good at basketball, or were you a waste of height?’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On being hip in his 40s:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are the age of the current culture. Every record store you walk into is playing '90s music. The '90s are currently what everybody’s into. Once it becomes like Brittany Spears, that’s when we’re done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On interviewing his nearly 80-year-old mom about her sex life for the parenting podcast \"\u003ca href=\"https://longestshortesttime.com/\">The Longest Shortest Time\"\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I mean, it made me blush. There’s a couple points where I was like, that’s enough, where I cut her off. You’re not supposed to do that in an interview. But it was my mom. It’s funny, a lot of the work I do, people sort of talk about it as something I’m doing for the world, or maybe for my community. It’s really all pretty selfish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I wanted to have that conversation with my mom for a long time because I didn’t know what was going on. We were really close, and there was this one aspect of her life that we hadn’t talked about, her dating life. I sort of had this narrative in my head that my mom was this lonely person.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On being a dad to two mixed-race daughters with different complexions:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While they’re clearly sisters, our youngest daughter is much lighter, her hair is much thinner, it’s not as kinky as her sister's. And we’re like, 'Oh, they’re going to have very different experiences.' My wife is #woke. She’s like, ‘Juno’s going to pass.’ And it’s just like wow. There’s two things there. Sami will probably be exotified by some people. And Juno may not be exotified, but she will be able to get into spaces that Sami won’t be able to get into and hear. We’ll have to have two different manuals [for raising our kids.]”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On staying funny when performing for people with post-election political depression:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have to make sure that the jokes that I’m telling are taking that perspective in, like I’m not talking at you, I’m like, 'I know, I know where we’re all at.'\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I was also heartbroken by the election, so I wasn’t different from the audience. I was actually right there with them. Laughter can sort of help motivate. I don’t want you to be sad. I also know how serious the consequences are. If you stay sad, then we’re not going to win. So, let’s get happy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On interviewing a fully hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan in the woods for his show “United Shades of America\" with a mostly white TV crew:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I kept having to sort of advocate for ‘I need help here,’ that’s a different kind of help than just like, 'What do you need, water?' It’s not that the producers and crew didn’t have my back. They had my physical back but they didn’t have my racial back. Nobody knew how to reach out. Eventually I formed a very deep friendship with them, and now we’re all waking up together. Now they realize, Kamau is actually feeling all this stuff, he’s having a real experience.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/wGBooYqU1dg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/wGBooYqU1dg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“The guy who runs the show now [in the second season] is a black guy who has a Ph.D. in psychology. And there’s more black and brown faces on the crew. So when we do things that sometimes seem crazy, we have each other’s back physically and emotionally. It’s great to have a crew that you can immediately get into the van when you drive away from the scene and be like, ‘That was crazy!’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>On making a podcast called \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/denzel-washington-is-the-greatest-actor-of-all-time-period/id935756902?mt=2\">\"Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time, Period.”\u003c/a> With 118 episodes!\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t realize how many other people out there felt the same way we did. Fans, other actors, people who auditioned for roles in Denzel Washington movies and didn’t get 'em. There’s a lot of talk in Hollywood, 'Tom Hanks is so great,' 'Will Ferrell is so great.' Why aren’t people doing that for Denzel? How come whenever we have the conversation about who the greatest actors are, it’s always the same white dudes? It’s like De Niro, Pacino, Brando, DiCaprio – all the “o” actors. 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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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},
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
},
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},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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},
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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},
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 9
},
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"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
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