Jonathan Teklai [00:01:54] Are you guys ready for a Mason show? Make some noise. Okay, so this is still a comedy show. I know that we’re at KQED, but we’re here to laugh, right? So we need some more energy, all right? Are y’all ready for some more comedy? Make some noises. We got some East Bay representation with his next comic. He’s from Oakland. He’s the host of the local Don’t Tell Comedy, one of the biggest comedy shows in the world. And he has a new comedy special called Black Excellence. Please clap it up for the very funny Marcus Howard.
Marcus Howard [00:02:34] Hey, what’s up San Francisco folks? How we doing? Doing good, yeah? Awesome. I’m gonna tell y’all a story about one of the wildest things I ever saw on BART. I love BART, dude. BART is amazing, because it’s like the great equalizer, you know? Like on BART, you see all walks of life. You can see crackheads, you can see businessmen, you can seen businessmen smoking crack, you now? It’s like a, it’s a beautiful place, you no? One particular time, right, I got on the BART at, what was that, 19th Street Station, right? I’m sitting there, I’m having a good day. Get to 12th Street station, a dude walks onto the train and he has a speaker and a microphone. And I’m sitting there and I’m going, ah shit, here we go, right? Cause those of you that laugh, you guys know that what’s about to happen is an act of terrorism, okay? Yeah, cause what just walked onto the train is an entity known as a BART Rapper, okay? To be a Bart rapper, you need to have three things. You guys need to be unemployed, you need have a dream, and you have to have no idea how to follow that dream, okay? Right? So this guy, he steps on the bar, and usually, I treat BART rappers the same way that you would a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. You just be real smooth, you know? You don’t say anything, don’t make no eye contact, you’re basically invisible. But this guy he gets on the train and he starts off, he goes, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I will be performing for you today, I’m gonna do some music. I go by the Young Humble Trillionaire, and this dude is none of those things, okay? So he starts rapping for a little bit, and it’s terrible. It’s some of the worst shit I’ve ever heard, it’s so sad. But then we get to the West Oakland station, and then I’m sitting there and watching this dude, he’s rapping. Another dude walks onto the train holding a speaker and a microphone. So the guy gets onto the train, he stops, he takes a look, they both lock eyes, and now there’s a Mexican standoff happening here, right? I swear to God, it was like real silent, they were just staring at each other. I saw a tumbleweed pass through. And the dude, the “trillionaire,” he goes, “Hey bro, I got this car right now.” And the other dude, he was on some type of different type of timing, because he went, “Fuck you, this is my train now.” Right? And so the two are going arguing back and forth and the “trillionaire” says, fuck it, he turns up his music, and then he just starts rapping over the dude. Other dude, he starts rapping too, and he turns his music even louder. And just for context, we are in a tunnel underneath the ocean right now, Right, so these dudes are going back and forth, they’re having a duel right now, right? And then finally, Trillionaire says, fuck it, he throws out his mic, and then he starts fighting with the dude. And they’re going back-and-forth, they’re pushing bam, here, here. They’re hitting, hitting. And here’s the thing, while Trillionaire lacks what he lacks in musical ability, he makes up in hands, you know? So he just starts welling on the dude, right, and then we finally pull up to Embarcadero Station, and then Trillionare picks the dude up, throws him off the train with his stuff and then the doors closed, and then he continues to rap for like four more stops. And then afterwards, I was starting to get to my stop and he goes, all right, everybody, that’s been your performance for tonight. My Venmo is Young Humble Trillionaire, and then I Venmo request him for mental damages, you know? Yeah, and that’s the story about the craziest thing I ever saw on BART, you guys. Thank you.
Jonathan Teklai [00:06:05] One more time for Marcus Howard, one more time for Marcus Howard.
Jonathan Teklai [00:06:11] All right, all right, we actually have a reverse gentrifying San Francisco. So we have a comedian from New York City clapped up for the Northeast New York. Okay, been living in the Bay, killing it all over comedy clubs, cobs, everything in the whole Bay Area. You’ve seen him on Fox, you’ve seen him on TV, now you’ve seen him on KQED Live. Clap it up for their very funny Joe Hill.
Joe Hill [00:06:45] Ayy, ayy, give it up for the DJ over there. Show him some love. Over there working. How y’all feeling? Listen, I’m gonna get right into it. Where’s my parents at? Parents, clap it up right now. I need y’all right now! I’m going through some nightmares here in the Bay. As you know, inflation is hitting our pockets. It’s hitting me hard. Daycare is whipping my ass. Let me just, let’s get that out the way. I got a 15 year old and a four year old. Yeah, don’t woo, help me with them. I need help. Especially that four-year-old, man. Daycare, it’s $1,400 a month for daycare. And he only go three days a week. I know, I’m like, he better be a black boat and dunkin’ by the end of the month. Like, what’s going on? And then daycare is one of them things, you know, as a father, you’d be like, where’s the bang for the buck going, right? You pay attention to the signs when you show up to daycare to pick up your kid, and you’d like, oh, this is all a scam. Soon as you walk through the door, the first thing you hear is that cough from in the back. That kid needs to be home. Who’s son is that? You gotta be careful when you’re going to pick your kids up. Sometimes you got kids that’s trying to leave with you that’s not even yours. They just wanna go home. I be trying to leave with my son. This little white girl grabbed my other hand and tried to scoot out with me and my son, I said, Katie, if you don’t get your ass inside, I’m from New York. That’s a felony where I come from, girl. And you gotta be careful with daycare. Everybody’s sick. These kids, they like terrorists. They bring home natural born diseases every night. Y’all think I’m bullshiting? My son came home with something called the hand, foot, and mouth disease. I thought it was fake. I Googled it. It’s a real thing. But the symptoms is just straight out plain simple. Your hand, your foot, and your mouth gon be jacked up. Like, it’s like you’re gonna have the chicken pox cousin all over your body. It’s crazy. And it’s Mother’s Day, right? It’s Mother Day, we can clap it up for all the moms in here. That’s right, that’s right. I had my mom come visit me in the Bay recently, man. And it’s interesting because when your parents come visit you or stay with you under your rules, your house, it’s a different mind thing that happens with you. Because you start to think about when you was a kid. I’m raised in the Bronx, New York, born and raised. I had a single Black mother, three boys. Single mother. I know she watching right now. She’s going to whoop my ass after I tell this joke. Single, strong Black mother. So a lot of times, you would just be coming into stuff. And you come into the house one day, she just look at you and just say something like, “You know, I brought you in this world. I take you the hell out.” And I’m like, I’m 10. Why are you telling me this right now? Who hurt you? What’s going on? So I’m thinking about that, especially little things like you couldn’t have company in New York City. Mom’s like, no, you don’t got no company. No video games. I’m, like, what is this? A concentration camp? Why we can’t play video games around here? You try to stay over somebody’s house? She’s like you can’t do that. You got a bed right upstairs. What you need to stay over somebody’s house for? So when she said she’d come into the Bay to see the kids, I said, dang, this is my time to get her back. I don’t know how, but I got to do this, right? I got do this. First night too, she come knocking on my door. Late night, knocking, knocking. “Hey baby, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m going into the city to hang out with some friends. Do you mind if I get a spare key?” I said, whoa, let me just, I had to come out my room and close my door, I said hold on a second. Let’s just get a little standing real quick before you hang out your little friends, right. Cause that’s how you stood up to your little friends. First of all, we don’t give out keys to strangers. You just got here this couple days ago, okay? Second of all. You need to be home when that street light come on in Berkeley, right there. Good night, and I slammed the door on her face and went to bed. She was mad too. Couple nights later, here she comes. She comes knocking again. She’s knocking, knocking. And if you’re familiar with the Bay, you know that wind chill factor come off that water and it get a little chilly in the Bay. She come knocking. She’s like, “Hey baby, it’s a little chilly in the front of the house. Do you mind? Cutting the pilot on and heating up the house?” I said, whoa, whoa whoa. Let’s just get an understanding of shit real quick. First of all, we don’t put the thermostat past 50 degrees on the west coast. And honestly, if you’re cold or something, you need to put a hoodie on and some socks and go in the front room. Good night, and I slam the door on her face again. I said, I know she mad. So now it’s like her last night. I’m getting ready to take her back to the airport. We ride in the car. She quiet, y’all. Like her feelings is hurting. I’m like, damn. I’m, like, you all right over there? She like, yeah, I’m all right, you know. I had fun in the Bay. I got to see my, my, my grands and the family. But I just felt limited the whole time I was out here. I felt like I couldn’t be myself. And I knew where she was going. And I had to stop on her track. I said, hold on a second now. I stopped the car, put it in park. I said hold on. Let me explain something to you. I brought you in the Bay, and I’ll take you to hell out. My name is Joe Hill, y’all have a good night.
Jonathan Teklai [00:12:07] Up next, this is a personal honor of mine to invite this next brother, one of Oakland’s best people, one the biggest representative of the Lake Mer- he’s the only person banging Lake Merritt and all of the Bay Area, actually from there. He’s one of the co-founders of the 510 day. He’s a storyteller, he’s a comedian, one realest niggas I know, clap it for Leon Sykes!
Leon Sykes [00:12:43] What’s going on? Ooh, hello. What’s goin’ on? How y’all doin’? I want to talk about the best time of my life, one of the greatest moments of my life. We’re gonna go back and pass a little bit. We’ll go back about 15 years ago. It’s 2010. It was Oakland, California. And at this time, Oakland, Oakland was still hella Black. And a lot of folks came out to the city. They weren’t going to a party in Oakland. It was really for a lot of folks in that area. And around that time, The New Parish was just opening up. So I’m giving y’all some backstories, right? And before The New Parish officially opened up, there used to be these secret ass shows with Dave Chappelle there. And hella people used to go. I ain’t had no money so I couldn’t go, I was broke. So eventually, there was this amazing event that showed up there called Monday Soul. So if you know, make some noise. Monday Soul, come on now. So Monday Soul was a live R&B series for up and coming artists all through the Bay Area. Action, shout out London Land, hello. And so at Monday Soul you had all these performances and it was really dope. But in 2010, something really special happened. August, 2010. And Dave Chappelle was in there. And I’m the host. Of Monday Soul. At this time, I’m this young milk mustache punk about 25 years old. I don’t know how to host parties. I didn’t know what I’m doing. I am drunk on stage. I’m over the falling over. I was like, hey, come on next, we got Melis Way. And they had to tell me, like, calm down. We need you to learn. And so Dave Chappelle’s here, and I’m freaking out. Like, this is the guy I’ve been watching my whole goddamn young life unto now. And they’re like, hey, we got some performances coming. And Dave Chappelle, he might come up, he may say something. And at this time, Ron Dellums is leaving office. He’s leaving office and he says, I’m not rerunning. So there’s gonna be a new person running for mayor. And at the time, it’s 15 motherfuckers running. I mean like 15 people were running. And this night, we decided to have some of the candidates come on stage at 10 o’clock at night. To talk about why they’re running. Here’s a fun fact about 2010. Four Locos still had ecstasy in it, they still had caffeine in it. And when you drank it, you were horny. Also, The New Parish had this drink called the Parish Punch. They had ecstasy in, caffeine, and you got horny as hell. What’s funny is a lot of people were in here, were there during that time. You know what I’m saying? And luckily, you know, some of our swimmers wasn’t swimming. You know, we’ve been, five years later we was shooting. But anyway, so we’re there and you have, I’m talking about when they say we brought anybody up, we had a guy there that is notoriously getting kicked out of clubs for drinking, overly drinking, getting carried out. He’s running for mayor. He said, “I already tell y’all about why I should be your next mayor.” So we’re like, nah, that’s all bad. So we go through all those, and then we bring out Dave Chappelle. And we have this singer Mimi. She’s singing a song for Dave Chappelle. Do you remember that? You don’t remember that, huh? Because you was drinking that Four Loco. And so Mimi sings the song, and they’re like all right. So my stage name is D-NAS. D-N-A-S, D-NAS So they say, all right, D-Nas, like, we need you to get Dave off the stage. We want to make sure that we get on with the show. It’s about 11:30 now. We got about two hours left. So I’m like, cool. So I’m standing to the side, and Dave’s like, all, right, Oakland, I love y’all. I’ve been out here for a few years. And so I’m, like—I’m whispering, like. All right, Dave, I’m going to come get you off stage. He goes, nigga, what? What the hell are you saying? I’m like, no, no. I’m gonna come get you. We know we’re gonna do a transition. He goes, nigga, what’s your name? And I was like, oh, I’m D-Nas. I’ma come. I’mma come get ya. So he looks at the stage, he said, all right, y’all. Coming up stage, next is your motherfucking council member, D-nasty. Cause this is the type of niggas we got runnin’ Oakland. And I sat there and I was embarrassed even though D- nas was the name I had. Like, essentially what Tenor said, couldn’t be a grown man being called Delicious. So I changed it to D-Nas. But him calling me D-nasty, I was like, God damn, I really gotta just stick to D-nas. And that, for me, was one of the greatest times of my life, to be able to be on stage with Dave Chappelle, be made fun of, and everybody loved it. It’s on video somewhere, and I’m gonna repost it so cause I need some money.
Jonathan Teklai [00:18:05] Alright, we have one more comedian, a very special treat. She wasn’t even supposed to be able to do this show. She finished another event early just to be be able do this. She’s literally one of San Francisco’s funniest all time comedians. She’s a regular at the Punch Line and all the comedy clubs in San Francisco. Ladies and gentlemen, please clap it up for the very funny, Carla Clay!
Carla Clay [00:18:33] All right, keep clapping, you guys, keep clappin’. Thank you. I want you guys to know right now I have to bring my purse up here because I don’t know nobody so I’m keeping an eye on my stuff right here. I’m from San Francisco, born and raised here and I want to you guys know something happened in the Bay Area not too long ago. It happened to all of us. It caused a lot of traffic, all right? Because someone decided that they wanted to jump off the Richmond Bridge, right? And it caused a lotta traffic. I mean, a lotta of traffic. It was just, the traffic was ridiculous. I want what you guys do right now. You can roll off the Richmond Bridge and survive. I know a couple of people in the back looking at me like, Richmond got a bridge? Come on now, and where I live here in San Francisco, I actually had a show to do on that night, so I had to make it, I had drive to Oakland. Where I live, normally it would take me 26 minutes to drive to Oakland. On that particular Friday, it was a Friday, it was gonna take me 49 minutes, an hour and 49 minutes. An hour and forty-nine minutes to Oakland? Are you for real? I’m like, I’m not gonna make it. So I had the call the booker up, said, get somebody else, I not gonna to make. The traffic out here is crazy. So he said, Carla, please, please you gotta make it! I don’t have nobody else. I go, my God, the only way for me to get to Oakland is to take public transportation. But a week ago, before that incident, I had to go to court and the judge had ordered me to stay off of public transportation. No, because of some bullshit, right? But I want you guys to know, I made it. I made to Oakland, I did two shows. I took BART, so now I got to get back on BART to make it back to San Francisco, so right? I go back to BART, I’m at the Oakland station, I’m looking around, I’m at the 12th Street, right, and I’m lookin’, lookin’, looking. Took me six minutes to find the San Francisco platform because you have to go downstairs. I didn’t know that. There’s no signs. I’m thinking, do we need a GoFundMe page for Oakland to put a sign up? So right, so now I’m on BART. I’m down there waiting for BART and people knew Jack City’s going on the platform. This man is walking around selling one shoe. Finally, the train shows up, I get on the train, make it back to San Francisco, and I get off at Civic Center. I know, I know somebody should’ve called and told me, they should’ve said, you know what? You should’ve got off at Daily City and walked back. That’s what you should’ve done. But no, I make it up to the street level, people, and I’m like, oh, what’s going on? Right, so now I gotta, I gotta make it down to the, I gotta go to the Five Fulton, I gotta get on to the five Fultons, right? So I gotta to make it to Hyde and McAllister. So I’m there by myself, waiting on the bus. I’m on the bus by myself. Waiting on the Bus. Here come the bus. Five people come out of nowhere. I don’t know where these people came from. They came out of no where. So we all get on the bus, we get on a bus. I got my little clipper card. I’m at the little station of Pan Pan. Five people to get on behind me. I’m like, oh shit, am I paying for everybody? Three people go to the front, two people go to the back, right? One man has, he has a wheelchair. He’s not in the wheelchair. He’s pushing the wheelchair. Now the MUNI driver, and she has to get out of her seat to lock the wheelchair up. So I go in the back and people are looking at me like I’m with them. And I’m looking at everybody like. No, I’m not, right? And one guy, he’s sitting in the back, he goes, he’s like, I just want y’all to know, I just wanna y’all to know I’m from here. I don’t do what they do, I don’t do what they do, I’m strictly crack-cocaine, I smoke crack-cocaine. I’m like, wow. What is going on in San Francisco at night time, right? And this man actually has a knife in his hand. He has a knife, he’s doing this with a knife. And the bus driver can see this from her seat. So she yells from her seat. Do he got a knife? I’m like, yeah, he got a knife. And then she go yell, he gonna need to put that knife away. I’m like, you want me to tell him?
Carla Clay [00:22:51] Because I’m like, if I say anything to this man, I know I’m going to jail because I’m not even supposed to be on the bus, right? So I’m, like, I’m now going to do it. I said, you know what? You know what, this is too much. You know, what? I got off the bus. I got off. I walked home. 10 blocks. 10 blocks! This is at midnight. So by the time I got home, the only thing I wanted to do was get in my car and drive to the Richmond Bridge. Oh, that was crazy because I believe that that person was still there. I was going to push him off. I was gonna push him off the bridge. That’s what I was gonna do. Oh my God. Plus you like, I want you guys to know I am famous in Santa Rosa. Thank you. Thank you, yeah, you know, because they want to put a statue of me up in Santa Rosa. I told them, no, don’t do that. I have I have enough pictures up around the different counties here in the Bay Area. I don’t need a picture of Santa Rosa, you guys. That’s my time. Thank you all very, very much.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:24:06] Shout out to Jonathan Teklai, founder of Full Circle, and host of this event. By the way, this was just a taste, but the full event was actually an hour and a half long, and it’s up now on YouTube. I’m gonna leave you a link to that in our show notes so you can watch the whole thing, which includes a panel of Bay Area storytelling experts, and a voting round on some of the best stories. Thanks as well to KQED Live producer, Tayleur Crenshaw. And the rest of the KQED Live Events team. By the way, did you know that KQED hosts some really cool live events just like this one at our headquarters in The Mission? Be sure to check out what KQED Live’s got cooking up at kqed.org slash live. The Bay is made by me, Jessica Kariisa, Allen Montecillo, and Mel Velasquez, with support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, and Holly Kernan. Support for the Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. And I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thank you so much for listening. Peace.
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