A few weeks later, Bob invited me to join Frish (his wife at the time) and him for a spaghetti dinner at Bob Sarlatte’s house. (This was during the period when Sarlatte actually received people at his home, before dubbing himself “The Genius.”) A dinner at the Sarlattes’ was something which Bob and I had imagined for a long time, given the enormous potential for laughs, so I only hestitated for a moment when Bob added that we were going to surprise Sarlatte by showing up in our pajamas. On the appointed evening, Bob and Frish arrived at my apartment in pajamas for the drive to Sarlatte’s house, putting any lingering fears to rest that I was going to be victimized again. During the drive, we giggled in anticipation of Sarlatte’s reaction to our cheekiness. We pulled up at the Sarlattes’, got out of the car … and then I heard behind me the frenzied laughter of Bob and Frish, which I instictively knew was trouble. Sure enough, they peeled off their pajamas to reveal normal clothes underneath, leaving me to face my favorite comedian in pj’s. Burned again, by the same joke!

A happy postscript to this story: Some time later, Sarlatte dropped by my apartment after performing at the Cafe for a late night session of beer drinking and plumbing the depths of my record collection. The wheels in his head began to turn, which ultimately resulted in another special dance night at the Other Cafe, in which he performed as Casey Kasem and I spun the records he introduced. I would hope that “The Genius” remembers this night as fondly as I do.

These late 70’s memories include:
-seeing my comedic Idol Robin Williams get on stage after the headliner finished and doing his “thing”. I understood absolutely nothing he was talking about but found myself laughing uncontrollably with the audience. However I kept waiting to no avail for the patented “NA-NU NA-NU” greeting that made me laugh every Wednesday night on television.
- finding the “fat face” of Michael Pritchard irresistibly funny. (Hey, I was 8 years old!)
- “hanging out” with Bobby Slayton and having him refer to me only as “the little jewish boy”

In the mid 80’s I lived in the east bay and once I got my driver’s license, I was able to come to “the City” more often.
-driving out with my friends to see Denny Johnston at the Other and breaking down on the bay bridge only to get a tow truck driver questioning us 16 year olds, the entire way to the club, on whether we have felt how soft Asian women’s skin is!!! CREEPY. The night was rescued by a night of great comedy.
- working a daytime shift at the Other Café during a high school summer and being “instructed” to add MORE garlic to the guacamole. :wink
- Ushering a New Year’s Eve show at the Palace of Fine Arts and doing a little too much underage drinking at the after party and us taking turns puking out the window of the designated drivers car on the way home.
- Ushering the next year’s New Year’s Eve show with some guy named Rob Schneider who kept telling us that “one day that will be ME up there” YEAH RIGHT DUDE!
- And yet another New Year’s Eve show memory when one of the years after Chip Romer got done addressing the audience he gives the mic to the comedian (who it was escapes me at the moment… maybe Tom Kenny) to which the first comment from the comedian is “Hey Chip, I see you let the forehead grow in”. I am not quite sure why I found that line so funny and why it has stayed with me over all these years but I could hardly breathe for 5 min afterwards. I guess at 17, bald jokes were funny. However, now at age 40, they are not as funny as I am right there with my friend Chip.

And then lastly having the privilege of working various jobs in the early 1990’s at Politics & The Other Café in Emeryville, ranging from comedy room attendant, door staff, bar-back, and then finally bartender. I had the honor to work with some great people there. I will always look fondly of my time there despite the “challenges” that existed with the job. I got to know both Chip and Richard as an adult, rather than knowing them just as a kid and I personally grew up a lot while working there. But perhaps my greatest experience there was getting to know Scotty Gelfand. Amazing individual who provided me perhaps the most singularly defining “geek” moment of my youth with an afterhours screening of Star Trek: The Next Generation “Best of Both Worlds” episode Part 1 and 2 (you know, the one with the Borg!) on the giant 15 or so foot screen and incredible sound system in the Politics dance floor.

The Other Café in all its incarnations has provided me with long lasting memories and the opportunity to meet, socialize and work with some incredible people.

I would be remiss not to give a special thanks to Bob Ayres for sharing this amazing thing you helped create. I will always treasure the memories! I love you “brother”!

But this homeless guy walks past the storefront and of course the stage was right there, and he sees a room full of people. He disappears behind the stage and then reappears with a cigarette shoved up each nostril and proceeds to “walk down stairs” from right to left. He disappears below the sill and then reappears walking back up stairs back behind the stage. He does this a couple of times, essentially getting all of the laughs. So Bob runs out and tries to grab him, but he skeedaddles. Bob went on to kill, but it was that homeless guy that warmed the crowd up.

This was a pretty typical night in the early 80’s SF comedy scene. Intimate, talented, and often totally random.

During one of the iterations, I remember a kind of bizarre combined exotic animal (sold illegally for pets) and plant store. The owner was friends with John Lee Hooker and I met the old bluesman during an impromtu late night pot-fueled jam.

Playing the coffee house circuit in the 1970’s as a singer-songwriter, I was thrilled when Bob, Chip and Steve opened the doors of The Other Cafe. At some point an open mike started up and the usual mix of local talent from embarrassingly bad to brilliant got up on the stage and plied their trade. It was almost exclusively musicians in the early days.

So I saunter down on one of these Sunday nights (1980 or so?) only to find the sign-ups exceeded the space available to perform. The MC was Barry Sobel. He was new on the scene and trying out his comedic ’schtick’ in between the musicians. I remember how frustrated I felt as he burned up valuable minutes with what (I perceived of at the time), as lame humor and musicians were eventually being introduced as an after thought, or so it seemed. Other performers never had the chance to take the stage and were turned away.

When I finally complained about this to Bob, he didn’t hesitate: “Think you can do better?” “Actually, yes…”, I replied and was given a chance to MC.

Sunday nights grew in popularity with more and more comedians showing up to the point where they began to outnumber the musicians. The ‘open mike’ nights were divided with music continuing on Sunday nights and the comics performing on Monday nights.

The rest as they say is history.

Bob Ayres helped me get a bartendinng job at the Waterfront restaraunt and then later called me to help open the new Other Other across from the Cafe’
What a great gig this was. Bill Romer and I shared lots of laughs working the bar.
It was like a big family, owners, employees, talent, the only requirement was you had to be or at least know what funny was. It is amazing to me looking back at how talented you all were and are especially back then.

I remember the first time I met Ellen DeGenerous. She flipped out at me for charging her for a drink after one of the KQED tapings. “don’t you know who I am”? She said. I gave her a Rob Becker style “Nooooohhhh” She was the only one of the many soon to be stars to drop that on me.

When I think back on all the people I had the joy to rif with back then it still blows my mind.

I would love to reconnect with anyone who wants to share memories of those great days in the Haight.

cheers,
Chris

Barry Sobol Flatiron.jpg (288 KB)

All my best,

Wayne

If you are reading this you might consider yourself lucky for two reasons:
1.    You have actually survived the last 25 years, and
2.     You were a part of and privy to something very unique and special. . . The Other Café.

Examining that time and place you can’t help but to weigh the repercussions and realize just what it meant to have been there.

The world was a different place, Reagan was in the White House, and Gas was
.25 per gallon. The internet didn’t exist and no one owned a cell phone. Cocaine wasn’t addictive, and Aids only affected gay people. Our music was on vinyl, and we were going to live forever.

We were young- full of ourselves- and San Francisco was full of artists, musicians, actors, and yes comedians, because they could still afford to live here.
It was a flashpoint; like Paris in the 20’s, or Berlin in the 30’s, and we will be able to tell stories to our grandchildren that to them will sound like someone telling you about knowing, say, the Marx Brothers or W.C Fields.

Think about that.

We knew so many people who went on to become stars of television, film and stage, etc. We’ll see somebody in a commercial or a name that rings a bell in the closing credits of some show.

Let’s face it; we can’t even turn on the television without seeing someone we knew two and a half decades ago.

There was no way of knowing then just how groundbreaking it was but we did know something interesting was afoot and the feeling was electrifying.

We just happened to be there in the exact time and place to witness so many of them get their start.

People like Paula Poundstone, Dana Carvey, Kevin Pollak, Rob Schneider, Richard Lewis, Greg Proops, Tom “Spongebob” Kenny, Bob Goldthwaite, Ellen Degeneres, Margaret Cho, Whoopi Goldberg, Nora Dunn, to name a few. Andy Kaufman would come in. Seinfeld played our little club as did Leno. Not to mention a guy named Robin who kept hogging the stage. We even saw Bobby Slayton, of all people Timothy Leary It doesn’t get any stranger than that.

Some of our regular Patrons became stars as well Danny Glover, Kathy Baker, Chris Isaac, The dead Kennedy’s, Rickie Lee Jones and others.
It became apparent later that we had been smack-dab in the middle of STARMAGEDDON.

I personally have so many great stories of that time that it really is just an embarrassment of riches.

So, hats off to Bob, Chip and Richard for serving as midwives to an era in creating the last of the great non-corporate comedy clubs.

I feel grateful for having been allowed to be a part of it.

Thank you.

Jim Boldman

P.S:
My favorites? Well. . . Paula of course, Jeremy Kramer, Kevin Meaney and my very favorite; Jane Dornacker who said, “Why have a personality when you can be one.”

Mari