A group of comedians — including Dave Chappelle and W. Kamau Bell — joined several San Francisco supervisors on the steps of City Hall Tuesday morning for a rally to save the legendary Punch Line comedy club.
Dave Chappelle, W. Kamau Bell Rally in S.F. to Save Punch Line Comedy Club
Comedian Dave Chappelle speaks during a rally to save the famed Punch Line Comedy Club. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Earlier this month, Punch Line tweeted that the club is facing closure in August "after being unable to renew our lease" at the 444 Battery Street location that has been their home since 1978.
"Any historic comedian will tell you, 'The Punch Line is not just a San Francisco phenomenon, it really is like an American phenomenon.' It's one of the premiere comedy clubs in all the country," comedian Dave Chappelle told a crowd of about 50 people. "When I quit my show that room became like a home to me."
“For me personally, it’s like a cultural epicenter of the city," Chappelle told KQED. "Every comedy community needs a place like the Punch Line. It’s really sacred ground, it really is.”
Punch Line is currently operated by Live Nation and the building is owned by a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Speakers at the rally were quick to point out that it is not a situation of a cash-strapped small business being pushed out.
"We’re here to tell the story of a group of scrappy Postmates drivers with no health insurance who are also comedians trying to save a club that's owned by a big corporation from displacement by an even bigger corporation," said comedian and rally organizer Nato Green. "Thats the story of San Francisco in 2019."
Speculation has grown that the building owners are likely to lease the space to Google once Punch Line's lease ends in August.
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"We’re losing the culture of the city and this is one of the things that defines San Francisco. If you let the Punch Line go, it's basically a wrap on San Francisco," said W. Kamau Bell, Bay Area comedian and host of CNN's "United Shades of America." Bell was a staple at the club early in his career.
"I don’t know what the city can do, but if they can do something they’d be saving, literally, what I consider a historical landmark," Chappelle said. "For American culture, it’s one of the most important rooms in America.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced a series of steps he is taking to attempt to save Punch Line. The first step, taken last Friday, was nominating the club as a legacy business, which would bring financial benefits to Live Nation. Secondly, Peskin — along with Supervisors Hillary Ronen, Sandra Lee Fewer and Ahsha Safaí — plan to introduce an "interim zoning moratorium" at the June 4 Board of Supervisors meeting that would prevent the building from being rezoned to any use other than entertainment purposes.
Lastly, Peskin said the city is "trying to have reasonable conversations with Morgan Stanley" and that they'd "like to do this with honey and not vinegar."
Without adding any specific details, Peskin also pleaded directly to the much-speculated future tenant of the building.
"I want to say to Google: 'Really, really do no evil.'"
For rally organizer Green and his fellow comedians, the importance of saving Punch Line is obvious.
"We need the Punch Line to have a local comedy scene," Green said. "The Punch Line has been a birthplace for comedians for generations, for 40 years, generation after generation ... Without the Punch Line you don’t get Kamau, you don’t get Patton Oswalt or Ali Wong or Margaret Cho."
KQED’s Kate Wolffe contributed to this report.