David Gborie is one of the funniest men in San Francisco today. Spinning Platters had a chance to chat with him ahead of his sets at Sketchfest, performing tonight at The California Academy of Sciences, and Friday, January 31st bringing his popular stand up showcase Get Yucked Up to Cinecave in the Mission. He’s also going to be live commentating on the Super Bowl this Sunday at The Roxie, as part of SF Indiefest’s 4th Annual Super Bowl: Men In Tights. He’s a pretty fascinating guy with a lot to say. In fact, too much to say, so I’ve uploaded audio of the entire interview, but after the jump, I’ll pass you a few highlights.
What do you consider your forte as a comic: performing or writing?
I think I’m a better performer than a writer. My jokes aren’t super long or punchliney, they are more like “oh here’s a thing” or “here’s a thought” and I try to expand on that. I’ll write down the beginning of a joke, but most of it I’ll just work out on stage. It’s worked for me so far!
Over the summer, you did a Kickstarter for a tour (Shitty Kisses Tour). How did that turn out for you?
It was great. It was everything I wanted it to be and more. I was already on the road when it started, so I was on the road for like six weeks. Doing comedy in other places is, like, if you keep doing it in the same place for a long time you start to get paranoid that what you do only works here, so it’s cool to see how it plays out somewhere else. Like, doing stand up in Omaha is a lot different than doing it in San Francisco, you know what I mean? It’s way fun
The core of the tour was all folks from the Bay Area. How did you pull a crowd in outside markets?
We have shows like The Business here… You know, top tier independent shows. Well, every city has those shows, people like that. So we would call the producers of those shows and ask if we can go on it, and it ended up working really well for us. We were out with Shitty Kisses for 3 weeks, and we only had two nights off.
How’d you get around? Did you rent a van?
Josh Androsky, one of the comedians on the tour, we drove around in his Ford Focus. All over the country.
That sounds almost uncomfortable.
It is. Tours are hard either way. It’s tiring, but worth it. This one was better because we didn’t sleep on too many floors.
Wow, you found places to stay. That’s pretty posh!
Yeah, I felt like a real fat cat, smoking cigars and drinking wine.
I suppose you even got to eat nearly three meals a day?
Yup. Almost every day!
How did you get invited back to Sketchfest.
Well, I’m really shitty and didn’t have the money to apply this year. But they brought my show, Get Yucked Up back, so I snuck in that way. Last year was really cool… I saw so much cool shit! Performing was great, but seeing other shows is cool, too.
As a performer, do you get to go to other shows?
It’s great. They told us, as a performer, we can go see any show that isn’t sold out. It’s like, you are double pumped because you are stoked to be in this great festival, but you also get to see all these performers that you normally don’t get to see. Festivals are a great place to see people you’ve nay heard about.
That was just a tease… Listen to the rest below. We talk about the steps needed to put together a good comedy showcase, the struggles of being a stand up comic in the most expensive city in the US, and a whole lot of other weirdness.
