Pleasant Hill native and former Berkeley resident Sean Keane is currently one of San Francisco’s top standup comedians. He’s a staple at comedy festivals and clubs, appearing on bills with name-brand headliners such as Todd Barry, Kyle Kinane, Tig Notaro, and Twitter’s DadBoner, and a co-founder of The Business, the award-winning long-form weekly comedy show at The Dark Room in SF’s Mission District. He’s a three-time “Iron Comic” titleholder and a winner of Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction (for his competitively erotic re-imagining of Driving Miss Daisy).
Keane has a non-fake, genuinely likeable and engaging stage presence. His classic routines include a complete dismantling of that Kay Jewelers commercial (with the deaf girl and her fiancée who doesn’t know sign language) and a long bit about getting news of Osama Bin Laden’s death via ESPN’s bottom-of-the-screen news crawl that is a tour-de-force, War on Terror-meets-the Sports Industrial Complex piss-take delivered in dead-eye sports announcer style. It’s head-spinningly, face-meltingly hilarious.
The recent spate of high-profile departures to Los Angeles by certain San Francisco rock musicians led to public hand-wringing, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth. Conversely, when an SF standup comedian moves to LA, it’s considered neither a defection nor a betrayal of the scene, but just part of the natural order of show business. After spending years honing their chops and charming their way to the top of the local heap, LA (or NYC) is generally the next stop for those SF comedians with the grit to pursue a professional career in show business. Patton Oswalt, Marc Maron, and Dana Gould all did time in the SF comedy scene back in the day and, more recently, locals such as Brent Weinbach, Moshe Kasher, W. Kamau Bell, Chris Garcia, Chris Thayer, Emily Heller, Alex Koll, and Sheng Wang have taken their talents to major media capitals on either coast.
Last month, Sean announced that he is moving to Los Angeles in May. But before letting him board that “Greyhound of the Skies” flight to Bob Hope Airport, clutching his single, grubby free drink coupon and the Craigslist Los Angeles URL scribbled on the back of a crumpled set list, it seemed only fitting to subject him to that most ignominious of employment traditions: the exit interview.