Santa Cruz Comedy Festival returns with surf spoof and other new twists
Everyone from local surf shop owners to big-wave surfer Ken “Skindog” Collins has been telling comedy promoter DNA how much they like his idea for a wacky surf competition.
And to a hard-working artist, that means a lot. “I’m not a surfer. I’m a kook at best,” DNA says.
His half-baked surf event kicks off at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, at Steamer Lane. It’ll be the first leg of DNA’s second annual Santa Cruz Comedy Festival, which continues downtown later in the evening. The surf contest will have a little more “mischief” than your average extreme sports showdown, he says.
“It’s not really judged on a national level. It doesn’t really matter,” DNA says of the contest. “We’re looking to judge worst surfer, worst-dressed. We’re going to have every category there is, while 30 or more comedians heckle—keyword—in a good-natured manner, the surfers and the people walking by on a busy Saturday. Everyone has said, ‘Wow, that sounds fun. That sounds like something we need,’ because so many of the events we have at Steamer Lane are super serious. People are competing in heats, and they want to get national recognition—Coldwater Classic, or whatever. We’re the complete opposite.”
DNA is talking fast and sounds more high-strung than usual. It’s 13 days before the festival and the promoter is a little stressed, having found out mere hours ago that Eddie Ifft, one of the headliners, is canceling. With Ifft out, DNA decides to cancel a Veterans Memorial Hall show, one of three paid events he had planned for Saturday.
There will still be a paid show that night at Kuumbwa, where all headliners will perform, as well as a sensual, intimate, woman-friendly show at Pure Pleasure featuring an all-female lineup save for the event’s headliner, Thai Rivera, a touring gay comic. DNA is funding this whole venture with money he made at his annual summer job with the Boardwalk. If the events sell out, he’ll break even.
There will be free venues all over downtown—Rosie McCann’s, Berdels, 99 Bottles, Metavinyl, Surf City Billiards, Tampico Kitchen and Lounge and the Poet and the Patriot. Like last year, the comedians will rush around on a tight schedule from one venue to the next, performing at multiple spots for the festival, which will share downtown with the Santa Cruz Music Festival on Saturday. DNA has been telling everyone, “It’s going to be the biggest art night ever in downtown Santa Cruz.”
As of late, the man has been pushing the boundaries of stand-up comedy with different formats and venues. In December, for instance, he’ll be putting on a show outside a barber shop. And this past summer, the Jersey native’s faux-apocalyptic “Last Late Night Show,” which was partially inspired by sideshows he watched as a child in Atlantic City, was one of the funnier and more disturbing things GT has seen in some time.
This year’s festival doesn’t wrap up until 1:30 a.m. on Sunday with four late-night mics, including one at the Poet and two at Rosie’s. There will also be a late-night open mic at Tampico, where DNA concedes things got a little out of hand last year after the restaurant double-booked with two events—a comedy hootenanny and a party for the UCSC Swim Team—in the same room.
“There were 100 swimmers who did not want comedy, and 100 comedians that did not want swimmers. It was like West Side Story. It was a verbal rumble. I feel like we won, because we had a microphone. And I apologize to the swimmers. It was way beyond my control,” DNA says, before pausing. “It was perfect is what it was.”
“We started off [today] talking about ‘mischief.’ Comedy has that edge to it. It’s not malignant. It’s not malicious. We’re not evil-natured people. Everyone I book is a super awesome person. But we like mischief, because it’s funny,” DNA continues, with a laugh. “This year at Tampico, it’s no swimmers, just surfers. But swimmers are welcome. I have no problem with swimmers.”
The Santa Cruz Comedy Festival is Saturday, Oct. 10. Visit standupsantacruz.com for more information.
COMIC STRIP Sammy Obeid, who has performed on ‘Conan’ and once did 1,000 nights of live comedy in a row, returns to Santa Cruz for DNA’s second annual comedy festival.
