In January, comedians Ralph Barbosa, René Vaca and Ken Flores finalized the paperwork on a joint tour across the United States. It was a long-held dream for the three friends, a few of the hottest young names in stand-up, to hit the road together. The day the deal closed, Flores could not wrap his head around the amount of money he was about to make. He called his tour manager and said, “Our lives are about to change forever.”
The next day, the 28-year-old Flores died of cardiac arrest.
“It was really tough to talk about it after he passed,” Barbosa says. As he and Vaca mourned the loss of their friend, their teams prepared to cancel the tour. Barbosa and Vaca, however, decided that the show must go on.
“Knowing Ken, he would have roasted us for not doing the tour,” Barbosa says. “He would have called us some weak-ass little bitches, or something like that.”
So, Barbosa and Vaca are setting off on tour, starting April 3 in Portland, and turning it into a tribute to Flores — a celebration of his life. They’ll donate a third of the proceeds from the shows to Flores’ family. “It should be a good payday,” Vaca says. “Ken did everything for his family and friends. I know it’s what he would have wanted.”
Further honoring their late friend, Barbosa and Vaca branded it “The Butterfly Effect Tour,” borrowing the name of Flores’ tour before he died. They don’t want it to feel sad, and they say Flores will be at the shows in spirit and via a pre-recorded segment. “Ken wanted to kill in those venues, so we’re going to make him kill with just a video, because the hologram was pretty expensive,” Vaca jokes.
Barbosa, Vaca and Flores became internet friends a few years ago, as their careers started taking off. Each of them Latinos born in 1996, they felt a shared kinship. “You’re born twice in this world: Once when you come out of your mom, and then again when your career takes off,” Barbosa says. “It’s crazy that the three of us were born at the same time twice.”
Barbosa and Vaca had each played a few shows with Flores before Vaca convinced him to move from Chicago to Los Angeles. The first time the three of them hung out, at a Chinese place on Melrose Avenue, Barbosa remembers thinking, “These are my cousins. Shit got comfortable real fast.”
They complemented each other in terms of their comedic sensibilities. Between Barbosa’s laid-back swagger and Vaca’s animated flair, Flores was “the perfect middle.” Their friendship was defined by late nights on Sunset Boulevard and roasting each other for hours. Their last memory together was onstage at the Hollywood Improv, where the three of them drunkenly held court for two hours.
Barbosa recalls visiting Flores as he received medical care in New York. “I remember him roasting how ghetto the hospital was, saying he was gonna die in there,” he laughs. Vaca smiles remembering a crude joke of Flores’ involving a stomach ultrasound.
“Ken was just a special character,” Vaca says. “There are so many memories I have with him. Even the sad ones, when he was in the hospital, were funny, because no matter the situation, he always made you laugh.”
