Oakland
Parking Lot Comedy Night Is Lit — & Light
by | Aug 3, 2023 2:06 pm
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Posted to: Spoken Word
Sarah Bass Photo
Hay Beacon performing at Oakland's weekly outdoor comedy venue: “People read me as high femme but I just need eyeliner to look healthy.
I often wonder if male comics are required to mention their significant other onstage, and, well, it seems they still do.
“We like women!” their wedding rings and wife-loving jokes proclaim. “And one of them loves me back!”
We must be informed of this, lest this crowd of mostly couples of and queers watching closely from their folding chairs in a parking lot otherwise go wild over the funny men.
Tuesday night, in a parking lot off 40th Street on Webster at an intimate outdoor weekly event called “Comedy Oscar,” was no exception.
The parking lot was lit up, and the routines themselves remained light, easy to laugh at, with heavy topics and wokeness just touched on in passing.
The vibe was gentle and the stakes were low for comics and audience alike, without pressure to perform for quick laughs or even get straight to the jokes. Amid a barebones setup, performers had the room to meander their ways into loose and often untested sets.
The set-up and “crowd.”
“Comedy Oscar” is produced weekly by Jordan Thewlis, Jeff Dean, and Hay Beacon, all of whom also produce other local comedy shows.
Could not have been sitting closer if I tried.
The stage, an aging pallet with a piece of graffitied plywood on top, stood astonishingly close to the rows of plastic folding chairs. I sat in the frontest of rows. (There were three.) I glanced at the roughly two dozen other guests and joked with my neighbors about tripping on the stage or nearly sitting in the comics’ laps.
Host Jordan Thewlis.
At 8:15 Thewlis walked onstage, snagged the microphone, began to speak, only then turning off the music playing from the phone in his pants pocket. “We started out about three years ago inside the restaurant, then got too big for it, and now ….” Thewlis began. He trailed off, glanced at the small crowd, and smiled. He introduced himself and the show, and after a few minutes on the mic handed it off to Pete Ballmer.
Pete Ballmer.
Irene Tu
Irene Tu addressed the writer’s strike, so close to her home in L.A.: “They’re out there at noon!” As well as her aesthetic: “Everyone assumes I’m nonbinary, which is why I’m not.”
One set later on Hay Beacon (pictured above), who is nonbinary, countered: “People read me as high femme but I just need eyeliner to look healthy. White people are naturally ugly; that’s our secret.” Then they hammed it for my camera.
Curtis Cook (pictured above), the headliner of the evening, is a writer for Hulu’s This Fool.
“Actually I’m unemployed,” he said. And “not doing so well, as you may have guessed since I’m drunk in a parking lot.”
Cook walks the crowd through maintaining anonymity by keeping prints off a credit card.
He proceeded to share the difficulties of raising a biracial daughter, who appears white. He spoke of how she got into a fight at school because of a racist white boy, and then offered a 90-second rundown of how to handle such a situation in the future, from beating and robbing to holding the credit card in your shirt to avoid fingerprint as you snap it.
You know, the sort of the stuff you teach all 6‑year-olds.
With the approval of the principal behind closed doors — “Don’t tell anyone; I’ll deny it” — Curtis and his daughter emerged victorious, and left us laughing.
Host Thewlis closed out thanking us for showing up — then lightly shaming those who had “donated one dollar on Eventbrite. That’s OK, I guess.” He shared their Venmo (@comedyoscar), but made no strong sell. It was still a light night out for comedy.
“That was a $10 show, huh? Or was it a $15? $35? How much were Hamilton tickets, $800? As good as that, better maybe?”
Someone behind me cheers.
“Yeah, better than Hamilton.”
I have never seen Hamilton and would imagine the seating and heating to be far more comfortable. But the two bare bulbs against a wooden fence in a taco shop parking lot on a Tuesday worked for me and my wallet.
Where to go next: Follow Comedy Oscar and Don’t Tell Comedy on instagram for weekly updates.
