Cobb's Comedy Club - San Francisco
Cobb's Comedy Club is a stand-up comedy venue in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. It was founded in 1982 and has had many top comedians on its stage.
Originally known as Cobb’s Pub, Cobb’s Comedy Club was opened and operated by Ron Kakiki and John Cantu in 1982 at 2069 Chestnut Street in San Francisco’s Marina District.
In 1987, it moved to the Cannery Shopping Center in the historic Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco neighborhood where it thrived for over a decade with owners Tom and Carolyn Sawyer, who went on to run the venue for more than 25 years.
In March 2002 a five-alarm fire broke out at The Cannery. Damage from the fire and subsequent flooding closed Cobb’s for a month before forcing the Sawyers into a lawsuit which eventually resulted in the club’s eviction from the building.
With the help of some prominent comedian friends, the Sawyers raised enough money to reopen Cobb’s in November 2002 at 915 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, in the club formerly known as "Dance Your Ass Off" (disco), later Wolfgang’s (rock), where, as of August 2022, it remains.
"I remember a night at the old Cobb’s, the one in the wharf, when Dana Gould was headlining. I think I was opening. Or maybe I was just there to see him. But he was doing a riff on the serious fall-off in terms of quality of the guests on Larry King. And the bit itself just had a couple of punchlines, but Dana went on some weird-ass tear that I swear went on for two minutes. And he was kneeling at the back of the stage, facing the wall, just muttering out-loud, like Larry King speaking into a dead mic on air. And I can’t describe it perfectly but it was this moment where Dana and the audience just… let go. After awhile he was barely making sense but EVERY SINGLE WORD was getting a laugh, and the audience was laughing their asses off because every word, OUT OF CONTEXT, was getting a laugh. It was an explosion, and I was there for it, and it was amazing"
Patton Oswalt
Cobb's Parties Volume 1
Cobb's Parties Volume 2
Cobb's Archives
