[Chappelle on SF streets in 2007 pic by sam.soneja]
Dave Chappelle was here in the Bay Area last week. He did two nights at Yoshi’s in Oakland. Did anyone get to see him? My mom did, and she was there until about 4:30 in the morning. Here’s her report:
All night long with Dave Chappelle @ Yoshi’s in Oakland.
I’m a big fan of both stand up comedy and late night/after hours, when our defenses slip away and delirium seeps in. The rules change, and things take on different meanings. Beginning in the earliest hours of Tuesday morning, Dave Chappelle performed an all night, 4 1/2 hour set of stand up routine, improv (once asking the audience for movies that’ve touched us in some meaningful way. He had funny, irreverent jokes for every movie mentioned, ending with a soundtrack for Precious, as if it were sung by a Country artist), piano playing (a little Moonlight Sonata), and a profound look at a keenly intelligent man at work. I laughed until I cried a few times.
There were way too many not funny hecklers to contend with, and sometimes I thought he spent too much time responding to them and engaging with them.
He said his biggest regret was not selling out to Comedy Central, and also said he’s not comfortable with people who say they tell the truth all the time. Dave smoked about 500 cigarettes, drank 2 cups of coffee, didn’t have a sip of water, and talked all night long!
He also has some big guns from working out and says he’s on steroids.
Thanks Dave, that was a great time!
Barbara Graber.
that sounds awesome!
Wow, the only thing my mom stays up late for is reruns of “Dos Mujeres, un Camino” on Univision.
I was into Chapelle before he got big. Like, when he was skinny.
I was at this show and this review is spot on, except I think she had more fun than I did. After a while, I was so ready for bed you could just do fart jokes and I would half-assedly giggle.
Not sure if I would do it again, but glad I did.
we saw him at the tues night show and he was hilarious though pretty mellow. what sucked though was after the show when we discovered our car and maybe about a dozen others parked on that block all had smashed windows and stolen stereos. at least they didn’t steal the car although it was pretty clear they tried hard..
i only heard bad reviews
I saw him a couple weeks ago at the Independent, and this review sounds pretty similar. His set went about 3 hours long, half of which was his material, the other half was hecklers shouting random shit at him and Dave responding. Sometimes it was funny, most of the time it wasn’t funny.
All the hecklers thought they had something to say that was funny, but it wasn’t. What sucks is that Dave’s material was actually really funny, but the 1.5hrs of people shouting stuff at him soured the experience for me.
Bit of a sub par experience for what cost me and my friends $50 each.
Clubs seriously need to be better at ejecting hecklers.