 As comedy explodes around the world in Montreal, Scotland, and New York City this summer, why did San Francisco not remain the epicenter for stand-up comedy considering all the great acts who came from the city on the bay we talk with will-durst America's number one political satirist and one of the high priests of the San Francisco comedy scene. We have some fun premium content this week. I wanted Robert Smigel to do Donald Trump because he's famous for doing Donald Trump and I was going to write something and then I listened to something we did three years ago and thought, you know, we can't top this. So this week's premium content is Robert Smigel doing Donald Trump. $2.50 premium content go to David Feldman show dot com hit the premium content button and you'll see Smigel is Trump hysterical $2.50. If you don't laugh your ass off, I'll give you your money back. You can get all our premium content for free by becoming a monthly subscriber for as little as $5 a month we take all major credit cards go to David Feldman show dot com become a monthly subscriber join team Feldo for only $5 a month you gain access to all our premium content. Check it out. We're to welcome a couple of new members to team Feldo. We always are grateful for people who support this show by listening and by donating money by becoming monthly subscribers or just donating money or just by buying some of our premium content. Welcome to team Feldo, Jonathan Katz, Mark Walgen, Mark Rossbock, Russell Martucci, Nicholas James William Guthrie and David Addy. Thank you again and welcome to team Feldo. Well, this isn't really Will Durst joins us. This is just me talking to a guy who knows all my skeletons and probably got drunk with a few of them. How are you, sir? I'm still drinking, but not this morning. But last night I had a gig in Cloverdale and for some reason I hooked up with this incredible crew who used to work at the theater. They have a gorgeous little 99 seats federally funded grant to the city. It's called the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center, a CPAC. What? Yeah. But just this great crew of people. Would CPAC the conservative people? No, no, no. Cloverdale Performing Arts Center, CPAC. So, yeah, unfortunately named CPAC. So I just hooked up with these guys and they're having a benefit and I did my little one-man show about being a baby boomer last year here and it went over to, I guess, well. And then this year they're having a benefit for the theater and so they charge in huge amounts of money and giving out hors d'oeuvres and champagne and wine and beer and blah blah and then I'm performing and they wanted a new show. They didn't want the boomer show. Well, I don't have a new show, you know. So I just patched together stuff, you know, pieces and new stuff that I'm working on and more political stuff and so I did a Dirst case scenario last night and it went well and so then I hung out drinking with them till like 2.30 in the morning. By the way, Will Durst, for those of you who are just joining us, has been called possibly America's funniest political satirist by the New York Times. He is the funniest political satirist in America and my hero and he will be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. I want to talk to you about that because that is insane and we have listeners in Scotland. We do. Oh cool. Yeah. They got to come see my little show. So tell us about your show and I want my friends in Scotland to get a pad and pencil, write it down. Where are you, when are you and what is the name of the show? The name of the show is Bomer Raging. I'm at the Gilded Balloon in the Lion Bar at 5.30 every day. Every day throughout the entire festival except Tuesday, August 18th. But otherwise, every day 5.30 in the afternoon and I hope it goes well. What is the Edinburgh Festival? Explain that to me. The Edinburgh Festival started out in 1947 and it started out as a thank God we're not speaking German festival and they invited the best theatre in ballet and symphony and opera companies from around Europe and you know first couple years are kind of rough and then everybody jumped in and said yes we are the best theatre company and we will be glad to go to Edinburgh. So about seven years later, cut to the chase, all the theatre groups and people in London are going well for Chroma's sake, there's nobody here, everybody's in Edinburgh. Let's just rent out a little theatre in Edinburgh and when people get tired of the real festival, maybe they don't want to see highfalutin stuff and we'll just be on the fringe of the festival and that's where the whole fringe thing started and then the fringe got bigger and bigger and then these guys from Oxford or Cambridge or Oxbridge or whatever they call it, you know the Cambridge Footlikes and you know they have their amateur theatrical things and they came to Edinburgh for the fringe festival and then they were so good that they were invited back the next year to be part of the actual festival and they were called Beyond the Fringe, they called that show Beyond the Fringe, perhaps you remember it and that was Dudley Moore and Peter Cook and Dr. Jonathan Miller and a bunch of and a couple other guys I think there were four or five and so and now the fringe is huge, every garage space, every you know little space in a school is used and this will be my eighth, eighth Edinburgh fringe festival. Wow. Wow. First in 11 years but I've done you know eight months of my life, I will have spent in Edinburgh. Wow. All August. Wow and we're talking Scotland by the way so I want all my listeners in Scotland or Ireland or London and I got to stop calling them my listeners, I'm getting very possessive but you should go see Will Durst, tell us again the name of the show and where it's playing. Yeah it's called Boomer Raging, it's from LSD to OMG that's what happens when acid flashbacks meet dementia and it's at the Gilded Balloon at the wine bar at 5.30 every night, go to Wilders.com. And if you go to the fringe festival, I'm sorry say that again I interrupted you, go to Wilders.com or GildedBalloon.co.uk. If one were to go to the festival, how many shows could one see? Well I used to work at the assembly rooms so this is what I know, assembly rooms had five different spaces and they had a 500 seat grand ballroom then they had a 250-seater, then they had a 150-seater, then they had a 99-seater and then they had a 60-seater and they had five spaces in this one venue and the 500-seater you know only a couple of times a day but all the other four spaces from noon until midnight would run with shows every 90 minutes a different show so we're talking like 30 or 40 shows per venue you know and then there's like six, seven venues like this and so I think per day there are 1200 performances. Wow so it's basically Branson with teeth but really bad teeth. Has that joke been done? Yeah I don't think so. Hey has this joke been done? A civilian gave it to me. Who? Has this joke been done? Who gave it to you? A civilian. Okay. So I don't know if they took it from a real profession. Yeah that's a problem usually. Go ahead. The joke is Donald Trump is that kid who fell down a well and then Lassie didn't tell anybody. Well yeah that would work yeah because he does look like Timmy he's got the hair well or Lassie's hair and somebody's hair. Yeah it works at a couple levels. I would try it have you done it yet? Yeah it kills. Then keep it I haven't heard that. There you go. You gotta be careful when civilians give you a line because you know they might have heard it from another civilian who might have gotten it from the tonight show. Right who might have gotten it from a comedian. Another comic. That was a I do remember couple of jokes that I decided to stop doing because I heard Jay had done them and you know Jay the problem with taking faxers you know the writer's guilt has been pretty lax about this but if you have a talk show it you can have people faxing and jokes from all over the world and you have to sign a release and I don't know how it works and it's good to encourage young writers the problem is they're not union and some of them go to comedy clubs to get ideas to get inspiration and I noticed are you still there sir? Yeah and I noticed I totally agree. Yeah so I believe in encouraging young comedy writers and I think faxing in is a probably a good way to I don't know but maybe it isn't because it's it's a you know for television shows it's a union job and if you have faxers you should do a better job of hiring your writers. You should you don't necessarily need faxers. Not to take anything away I know people get angry because a lot of listeners are butting comedy writers so I don't want to discourage people. Let me tell you why I don't watch John Stewart or Leno or Fallon or Kim or any of those guys and one of the reasons there's like three reasons one reason is I am constantly on the lookout for a new bit or a new line and I am afraid that right something that I see on one of those shows is gonna you know like DMSO kind of simmer down into my brain and then bubble up two months later and I'm gonna think that it was mine okay that's one problem right. Another problem is that I have seen on these shows a joke that I originated and it was too idiosyncratic for it to be one of those you know reach the same conclusion with the same information at the same time things which I totally understand and that can happen but this was a joke about Dick Cheney detaching his jaw and swallowing Lloyd Benson Hall I mean I mean it was too close and it was and it was and I've been doing it for months and then I saw it on the Stewart show and I got really pissed and I approached the joke differently now because I thought that the audience was aware what I was aware that somebody on TV had done it and I was projecting on them that they were gonna think that I ripped it off and I was so I had a whole different attitude about the joke and it was it never got the same response because I I stutter stepped it you know I didn't go into it with full confidence so that's now I'm sure a lot of my stuff as you know because what I'm saying about the you know the same information entering the same computer you know you're gonna come up with the same joke and so but I don't watch it so I don't know so I never have to worry about that there are two schools of thought one was don't watch other comedians you don't want to be influenced I think Adam Sandler has that theory Judd Apatow is an expert on comedy told me that when they were starting out Judd would always be going oh come look at this guy come look at this girl come come come come come and Adam said now I don't want to be influenced whereas Judd is a complete student a scholar of stand-up right there's and Carlin would never I mean I don't think Carlin went to movies because he didn't want to be influenced by someone else's version of the vision you know and I feel kind of guilty that I don't watch that much stand-up so should I feel guilty because somebody said because I've had these conversations with people that and I don't want to be influenced and honestly if somebody's really good I get jealous uh yeah unless they're great in a self-destructive way that I'm not threatened by them or they're doing something that I could never even do but we were starting out I really I didn't watch that much I would I remember I would go outside because I didn't want to watch other comics and I found the ones who watched other comics excessively kind of stalled and then they became like joke enforcers they became the comedy police this bit was stolen he's doing your bit and I thought I don't want to be the comedy police I don't want to be the that really locks up your creative process if you become a joke police officer oh yeah there's uh there's guys in Austin and Houston who are bill Hicks policemen you know they they they yelled at Kathleen Madigan for a joke that she did yeah I I think a lot of people come to the same conclusion you know I had a joke and that's why I've never really watched Bill Hicks I had a joke that I was doing about uh something about God created the earth in six days and if you that makes sense because it looks like a real rush job you know well that's funny joke yeah and then I go to England this was like you know 15 years ago and everybody's walking up to me going that's Bill Hicks's joke and I went what and I and something about God rushing it like he created the earth I don't know how I don't know how the bit goes so I stopped doing it I have the last thing but I had to go to England to be accused of stealing guys yeah yeah they they have a pretty uh pretty uh strong bill Hicks enforcement as they should so you're in Edinburgh I wrote a joke in I think 92 it's on my cassette and I did a cassette it's called none of the above and I did a joke and it was about Pat Buchanan building a wall on the Mexican border all right and how are we going to build the 1952 mile long 15 foot high fence on the Mexican border without using Mexican labor I did that joke like in 1992 now fast forward 15 years suddenly there's a huge argument about who wrote that joke and I'm not even in the conversation right right I mean that I mean Carlos Mencia did that joke and then Joe Rogan jumped on stage at the comedy store five years ago and used that joke to expose Carlos Mencia as a as a thief that he's and then I guess I don't remember specifically but I think Joe attributed to somebody I remember I got it on tape and it was a commercially produced tape yeah people can check well that's the good thing about Twitter is you can time stamp a joke you can go back in time and say I wrote this joke and there's the date but I don't get too much traction on Twitter I get more on Facebook I find Twitter to be Facebook has changed the algorithms now it's hard to get any traction they want you to buy advertising exactly well so what is a day in the life of a fringe festival comedian you get up at what time you have a show at 530 and you're there for the month how long is very civilized yes you're there for how long a month for month yeah 30 days arrive at August 3rd and I leave September 1st and is somebody running the festival well there's a fringe office I imagine there's a board and the major players because I always I've never done major players in terms of comedy are four the gilded balloon the pleasant the assembly rooms and the stand and those are I imagine that they have some you could you know some influence in terms of who sits on the fringe board and so the fringe puts everything together and then there's a couple of coalitions that they have and I haven't been there for 11 years so I don't know as opposed to the Montreal comedy festival which is very tight you know right now right it's going on right now yeah I had never been to the fringe I kind of equated to the Occupy movement and maybe I'm wrong about that where it's kind of fluid amorphous and anybody can go there as long as they can get a venue is that true yes but breaking out of the clutter you know just like today everything breaking through the clutter is impossible and you know the major newspapers are all sent in reviewers and you know but still there's so many shows and even comedy I think there's going to be like 40 comics at this venue that I'm at you know 40 different comics including proofs and in a bunch of British heroes you know really big time comics so I don't know if I'll be able to break through the clutter and the show that I'm doing I'm doing my boomer show but I'm doing a 65 minute version of the 90 minute show so it's going to be I think it's going to be jokier you know then the real show it's not going to have the ups and downs of the real show so and I don't know if it's going to translate I don't know if the boomer experience that I try to portray from America is going to be reflected in that because I'm sure the English boomer experience was totally different than ours they had a couple of booms during the war exactly and they lost a lot more men than we did yeah I think they look you know we lost what five percent of the guys who went over and they lost like 20 or something god if you couldn't get laid after world war two that is like that that's a joke that I've heard about burning man you know burning man yeah this guy this guy is so lame you couldn't get laid at burning man why are there so many women there it's so sexually free oh I'm talking about the odds that there were yeah I know the odds of of women to men I mean there must be after world war two it must have been five four or four three or something for as little as five dollars a month you can gain access to all our premium content by going to david feldman show.com and becoming a monthly subscriber we take all major credit cards check out this week's premium content it's robert smigel doing donald trump from three years ago it's hysterical it's two dollars and 50 cents if you don't laugh your ass off I will give you your money back two dollars and 50 cents or get it for free by becoming a monthly subscriber five dollars a month five dollars a month we accept all major credit cards and you gain access to all our premium content when is comedy day and you sit on the board of comedy I'm just on the advisory board Debbie's the actual Debbie's the CEO of the board she's president of the board so it's September 20th this year okay noon to five golden gate park and Sharon Meadow and uh it'll be a lot of fun and I think I'm gonna do it I have a gig the night before in Mendocino so I'm gonna drive home from Mendocino on a Sunday which is gonna be a bitch but you sit on the board of comedy day I'm gonna stir up some feces right now I'm gonna accuse San Francisco of starting something they couldn't finish I'm gonna they've been doing it for 35 years yeah I'm gonna go after my hometown we were there first in San Francisco when did comedy day start 1981 1981 this is what we did in San Francisco and I say we because you were there you came before I did but uh we created the concept that you didn't have to be a corporate comic to make a living and I'm gonna hang out for one second we'll durst okay I'm gonna give you a compliment and then I'm gonna rip you a new one okay okay all right early 80s there was a club scene in New York City that started in 1974 75 you always had the improv and then you always had the improv and then you had catch a rising star those are for comics and cabaret acts people who sang you know bet middler and pat benatar would perform at catch a rising star and the improv not just comedians and then you had comic strip opened up and there were these showcase clubs and in the early to mid 80s when I was starting out I looked around the scene in New York and there was one purpose to stand up comedy in the early 80s in New York and that was to get on the johnny karson show because if you're sharing that life or saturday night live because then you became an opening act on the road for a singer or a band or you got to be a headlighter there were no comedy clubs in middle america at the time there were a couple there were a couple in 1981 there might have been 20 full-time comedy clubs in the country there were a couple in chicago there were a couple in LA there were a couple in san francisco there were a couple in new york there were a couple in boston and then the comedy scene exploded with the rise of cable jumping ahead all right so what made you let me let me run this interview okay so there there we have david feldman columbia journalism graduate so you could write you kind of knew show business now why didn't you stay in new york which is where as our good friend tom rhodes wants to say what are the two places along with la where the cameras are plugged in why did you come to san francisco instead of new york because i thought i was a horrible human being and i needed basic training i'd read about like the marines if you join the marines they'll break you down and then rebuild you and i felt i needed to be rebuilt i knew enough because i was in therapy even back then i lacked empathy and uh had the wrong values so i knew that i needed to just be broken down and rebuilt and i thought i needed to do it in a place that anonymously but not anonymously because i was already anonymous in new york but i needed to do it in a safe loving space where people uh and san francisco was that place that's where you go to be hugged larry brown described me as a beaten dog you know twitching and all that kind of stuff and i wanted to be accepted by you and dr gonzo remember thinking wow if i could just you know hang out with will durst and dr gonzo i would be and and you had to prove that you were a good person to be accepted by the comedy community in san francisco it wasn't just about being funny you had to be a good person because we went on long car rides together nor the california so if you weren't a good person you weren't gonna get stage time and i thought well how do i get to be a good person how do you what what is what does it mean to be a good person because no one ever taught me that in new york city no one taught me how to be kind and empathetic and i've heard somebody say about show business it's all political and i said no that's you're cheapening show business show business isn't political it's a car ride and we're going to be on top of one another for a couple of hours are you going to get on my nerves because there are a million people who can do what i do and what you do are you going to get on my nerves that's really what show businesses are you there or did i get yeah or did i get on no i get on people's nerves yeah i get quiet okay so i came to san francisco and this is what i saw what year 82 82 and this is what i saw i went to the other cafe and i saw barry sobel on stage who i had never heard of he had fans then i heard about you who had fans and bobby slayton who had fans and i remember at first being in new york ago and what the what i mean fans who the hell are these people they've been doing comedy for you know nanoseconds what what what gives them the right to have fans jerry seinfeld had the same reaction about san francisco comics right seinfeld said that san francisco comics were like uh the the inhabitants of shangra la that they would do fine as long as they stayed within the confines but as soon as they tried to leave shangra la they would turn into a wizard and you know it wouldn't work and and he was partly true you know and and leno was kind of appalled when he came to san francisco that there were local celebrities oh really yeah i mean what's what's going on something and i was not appalled but i went huh you can get famous here in san francisco well in the early to mid eighties well the scene was such that yeah it was the only place in america possibly the world where you could be a famous comedian and have a following without doing johnny karson without being a movie star it was the only place in the world where local comics were treated as heroes is that a fair statement well yeah we were little rock stars yeah and and and bennett had a lot to do with it alex bennett who won't do my show but alex bennett had a and and robin alex and robin that's true robin brought a lot of people in but alex had a daily morning show that highlighted comedians he made little stars mm-hmm and so there was a thing called but also he used us i mean he used us for his show because most he created this whole format most most radio shows that had comics on where they have comics on for five minutes a half hour an hour tops he would join the show for an hour tops and alex made us stretch and we would be on for three hours a day we would do we would call host the show and you come in at seven and you'd work until ten and then you go out and have breakfast and uh he would buy you breakfast and that was his his way of repaying you and we learned how to stretch that muscle uh of being funny for three hours you know at a shot which is tough on the radio you know and he would he was like johnny curson he would give it up he knew that if people like the alex bennett show they wouldn't remember who got the laugh who who got the funniest joke of the day that they just oh did you hear the bennett show so he was uh he he was very instrumental in and creating the little man and and he would he would run hot and cold and remember ganzo uh was his golden boy and then he was banned from the show and slayton was a golden boy he was banned from the show ruben was a golden boy he was banned from the show so but they all came back and it was good gracious so yeah you know yeah he had he had power issues was very great to me so there was a thing called comedy day now this doesn't sound like anything big these days but when was the first comedy day 81 81 there was nothing like this anywhere in america i don't know when montreal started probably around the same time is that fair the festival in montreal perhaps perhaps but in america there was nothing like this what was comedy day and how big did it get well comedy day started as a dream of ossemon and becky urwin and i think uh john can't do john can't do john can't do and it started out in july of 81 and it was as many comics as we could fit out of the bill we played at the band show and then it started comedy started getting big and in 1991 91 it started in 81 but it started getting so big that it outgrew the bad show and it moved to the polo fields and robin would come whenever he wasn't filming if he wasn't on location and bobcat had just done the police academy movie so he was huge and whoopee had uh been in a couple of movies and they would do the show i think they did it a couple three years in a row alan alan and one year in the polo fields because of a convergence of comedy you know a cresting as a wave and also because sponsorship because channel two fox two would always do uh film us and then do a truncated version in our version put it on tv and the chronicle was a sponsor the sample to run a full page ad once a week for the six weeks previous to comedy a full page ad with all the comics were appearing with our faces you know in the ad and then the week before comedy day they ran the full page ad once a day so i think in 90 91 or 92 one of those years we had 60 000 people at the polo fields of golden gate park and it was huge and was massive and it was ugly and it was hot and it was it was magical it was magical you would always have one of the best sets because i would be hitler i this was my hitler moment i would look out and i thought this is my nuremberg rally i i am gonna speak before 50 000 people 20 000 people and i would get up there and just pretend i was hitler and i would uh yeah it was exhilarating are you still there i am and the other thing i remember i'm blowing my own but and of course you killed and everybody killed the two things i remember about comedy day my happiest moments were comedy day was is he or isn't he and he being robert yeah and everybody so in the back of my mind i always knew that people were waiting for robin is robin williams gonna show up today at the height of my powers as a stand-up comic and we're talking 20 years ago when i was good when i when i thought i was great but in reality just good i said bring me up as robin williams i said this will be one this was gonna be i said let's create one of the great stories of stand-up this will be i'm gonna do one of the great bombs of all and i said just bring up here is ladies and gentlemen robin williams and i would just walk out and go how you doing you know and then try to do my act and make the comics love me for being a supreme asshole and right before i went on a moment of clarity swept over me and i thought to what end why why would you do this to get the other comics to love you is that really is this really uh the other thing i remember was one of my sons had just learned to walk and he stood in the wings waiting for me to go out and i think it there must have been 50 000 people there and he's he's and he doesn't understand this he's just holding my hand he can barely stand and i go out and i do my stuff and i do pretty well and then i go off stage and he runs on to the stage going my turn my turn and i thought you know how fearless i think you know it took it was so hard for me to get up on stage and summon the courage and here's this little two-year-old running up in front of 50 000 people screaming my turn my turn like no fear how frightened were you when you first stepped on stage i was i mean i could not bring myself to stand on stage and tell jokes i was terrified is it easier now to envision yourself as a stand-up do you think the comics today and before we started we're talking about how much better they are than we were when we were starting out do you think they have the fear that we had getting up on stage for the first time that's an interesting question i know that i didn't have too much fear real hard part for no because i approached it from so many different directions you know i i had done musical theater i'd done community theater i'd done theater in high school and college and i wrote for the school newspaper and i wrote for the underground newspaper and so i had i had you know investigated those skills so it was a very small step it wasn't a huge leap you know i built the ramp to that stage so you know i had uh there's a scene in gilden uh rosencrantz and gildenstern are dead that are friend and i did uh and that's almost a comedy routine you know we did it as a double act so i had approached it from it wasn't that big of a deal but putting the first seven minutes together the first five minutes that was a big deal and where did you where did you get up on stage first uh i had a lot of fits and starts but i would say in college at the age of 21 1974 some november so no 22 22 years old a teacher at the university of wisconsin in the theater program named herb felsenfeld uh wanted us to do a performance mr felsenfeld herb felsenfeld mr felsenfeld professor felsenfeld professor felsenfeld who actually moved to san francisco moved to san francisco state have you seen professor felsenfeld lately i have i have he had his lovely wife gail uh yes and uh so i in this classroom at the university of wisconsin milwaukee i bought a case of beer of long necks and we used to have these stamped tin ashtrays in the student union and i brought those into the class and i shut down the banks of lights in the class and i left the one uh where i was going to do my stuff on and i sold beer and i handed out ashtrays encouraged them to smoke and i did my seven minutes and uh and he sold beer and i saw i actually made three dollars on my first gig wow yeah and then i had a set and i went down to the local open mic and we had a monday open mic at a place called the rusty nail i went on and the first time i went on at the open mic i was already like the third or fourth best one you know because i had a had stage time and i and i knew how to write and i remember there was one kid who was like 18 years old and he was doing he had stolen a bit from a bill cosby album and it was all about how it was when cosby goes to las vegas there's a mirror on the ceiling so when he wakes up the morning he thinks he's being attacked by a naked skydiver which is a funny joke yeah and but the kid told this verbatim from the album and we all recognize all the comics knew what was going on but the audience didn't believe him because he was like 18 he didn't look like he was married it didn't look like he'd never been to vegas they didn't buy any of his routine was he white or black it was a white kid uh-huh uh-huh it's interesting interesting you know i took notes remember going to the punchline i guess it was 82 or 83 seeing the callbacks for the competition and writing down i have these notes somewhere because everything's in boxes now of what i thought of certain comics who i thought had it and who i thought didn't this is before i even got up on stage it was sexy stand-up was i mean i just remember you know back in the early 80s you didn't take it for granted if somebody who could summon the courage to get up on stage was sexy it was powerful i don't know if that is still present i don't know if that force field of just not as much because the group of people who who did it like in the early 80s you know they were part of the baby boomer generation and and they were rocking they were living in the 60s you know they were living in 60s their version of what the you know the rock and rollers did and and so and and the audience was the same thing they were still on that high and there were a lot of drugs being used back and there was an electricity about going to a comedy club in the late 80s you would walk here and the punchline would be dead packed on a wednesday night and and people people would see when the comments walked in and you hear like a little buzz and stuff and and it's it's more commonplace now evening at the improv it made it so uh pedestrian it's more commonplace and you know fewer and fewer people are afraid to be put on television used to be a big thing to be on television now everybody's on television i'm talking about people who have no showbiz ambitions and i think the hecklers are better and less afraid of public speaking do you find that to be true nah i hate it i don't have many apples we have some fun premium content this week i wanted robert smidle to do donald trump because he's famous for doing donald trump and i was gonna write something and then i listened to something we did three years ago and thought you know we can't top this so this week's premium content is robert smidle doing donald trump two dollars and fifty cents premium content go to david feldman show dot com hit the premium content button and you'll see smigel is trump hysterical two dollars and fifty cents if you don't laugh your ass off i'll give you your money back you can get all our premium content for free by becoming a monthly subscriber for as little as five dollars a month we take all major credit cards go to david feldman show dot com become a monthly subscriber join team feldow for only five dollars a month you gain access to all our premium content check it out what happened to san francisco there is a phenomenon of comics who leave san francisco move to los angeles and begin to hate san francisco do you know about this phenomenon no yeah there's a phenomenon of comics expats who leave san francisco go to los angeles and really begin to see with anger that there's a place called san francisco where it's cool during the summer and people are nice and nobody's asking you what are you doing what are you doing and how gentle the audiences are and we don't hate san francisco we just resent the fact that we're no longer there uh that makes us angry uh that yeah that you can't stay you can't stay now is it fair to say that we not you but something went amiss in san francisco that there should have been a bigger more vital scene that celebrated san francisco's comedy roots that there should have been that there should have been a festival tied to comedy day that there should have been oh sure sure yeah that was that was a mistake uh limited vision limited vision keep it small keep it uh we had a couple of club owners who had had very tiny vision they didn't they didn't see the big picture that you know and they they were very satisfied with their own little fiefdoms and it was they spent all their time uh worried about little tiny incremental power struggles rather than seeing a larger picture and a lot of it had to do with that you know and i'm talking about tom swyer and john fox who uh they just didn't you know and alex bennett and anybody who had a fiefdom that that is is my rap against san francisco it's like that old joke about uh academic politics why is academic politics so brutal because so little is at stake wow yeah and that goes with another thing that bobby nickman told me remember bobby nickman no the comic bobby nickman no he used to work for uh robert moore bob moore a lot and that now he's a comedy writer sitcoms but he told me the shallower the pond the meaner the fish listen i love san francisco i you know i and i i i'd be dead if it weren't for san francisco i i don't think i would have survived had it not been for san francisco somebody said to me about san francisco that it can only handle one trend at a time so that it could spawn the birth of rock and roll i mean there was rock and roll everywhere but it really became a sanctuary for for rock and then that kind of didn't fade but they got older and then it was stand-up comedy and there was always a sense in san francisco of how long is this going to last is this a fad and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy there was yeah well you know clear channel bought everything but even before that there was this boom and bust mentality in san francisco about stand-up being a fad and we would kept saying how long is this going to last how long is this going to last and then it didn't last whereas in other parts of the country and the world it's grown exponentially i think it might have something to do with the geography of san francisco but the fad of the internet which is to the south of san francisco silicon valley they have more of an infinite view of commerce they they don't see it as boom and bust they just took on the world and i yeah but their half-life is like six months you know but nobody's saying how long is the internet going to last it's super attenuated no but all all the all the individual players i mean you know they it's really a hot house situation and so that's what they're creating in san francisco and now san francisco is a it's a it's a encapsulated little bubble it's a techie terrarium and and because there's so much money you're not going to pull a dominant straw scion with your housekeeper are they knocking on the door uh no but she's rolling her cart past me furiously where is clover dale very quickly where is it where is it clover dale is about 30 miles north of santa rosa oh it must be beautiful it is a little hot but it's beautiful okay will durst two hour listeners in scotland you can see them at the ember festival give us the dates the time and the name of the show yeah it's uh see me at the fringe and the show is called boomer raging from lsd to omg i'll be at the gilded balloon at 5 30 every day at the wine bar so go to will durst dot com or gilded balloon and will thank you buddy great talk it here yes we'll do it again real soon thank you sir sure that's our show our premium content this week is robert smigel doing donald trump go to david feldman show dot com get all our premium content for free by becoming a monthly subscriber for as little as five dollars a month we accept all major credit cards thank you for listening