It's evening on a Tuesday that was presumably spring-like in San Francisco: a day filled with sunshine, and a light breeze that has quickly turned dark and bone chilling, prompting me to step out the door, then run back inside as if I were surprised, to grab my black scarf and fingerless gloves before running off to the Market Street platform at which Nextbus has (wrongfully) predicted an F train will arrive in two minutes.
That is how most of my Tuesday evenings seem to start. Add a dose of me talking to myself on the street (reciting new jokes) with a disorganized stash of tattered paper notes falling out of a folder haphazardly wedged into my tote bag, and you've got the full prelude to my long-standing date with Harvey's, at 18th & Castro Streets, for my weekly stand-up comedy show, Harveys Funny Tuesdays.
Each week I host a new lot of guest comedians and entertainers, which proves to be equal parts exhilarating and unnerving. Anything can go wrong, and in the history of this show, it has.
We'll start with the peccadilloes: On many occasions, comics simply don't show up; but that's the best case scenario. (I've also had a comic show up drunk and still attempt to do comedy. It was funny, but not in the way it should have been.)
Audience members have even been drunk and tried to stumble onstage. I've left my food at a table to go onstage, and come back to find that some tipsy barfly ate half of it. The sound equipment has stopped working halfway through the show. The lights have gone out. Small groups of naked men have formed outside, staring into the windows. Putting on a good show is a task that requires a lot or preparation, yet you can really never, ever, ever be too prepared. Ever. (Don't believe me? Keep reading.)
Nonetheless, with the help of Harvey's great staff, the stage presence and punchlines of all my guests, and an audience eager to laugh, we pull it off, week after week.
I started a bi-weekly comedy night at Harvey's in 2005. At the time, it wasn't much of a hit. Our core demographics were packs of boys trying to sober up to prepare for round two of drinking, and disgruntled bears eating burgers. A few years later, after a vivid makeover and shift in management, Marga Gomez started a Tuesday night comedy series called Marga's Funny Tuesdays. This morphed into Harvey's Funny Tuesdays, and comedy night in the Castro has been a staple ever since.
Harvey's Funny Tuesdays is a lot like a potluck. It's free to attend. There is a new, diverse line-up of comedians each week of all backgrounds and genres. The crowd is made up of local residents, community figures and tourists taking in that Castro experience.
And if it's your lucky night, you might even bump into a loose penis on your way in.