Listen up, comedy geeks. San Francisco has a brand new 3-day festival and this one is colossal. Brought to you by the folks who bring you Outside Lands and Bonnaroo, Colossal Clusterfest is a humungous comedy smorgasbord featuring top-shelf headliners like Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, Sarah Silverman, T.J. Miller and Hasan Minhaj, plus loads of themed food and oh yea, music too.
“Ten years ago everyone wanted to grow up and be a rock star, now everyone wants to grow up and be a comic,” said Steve Raizes from Comedy Central. What makes this festival especially special is not just the rock star comedians but the opportunity to literally eat, drink and breath comedy for 72 hours.
Ticket holders get to do more than chuckle and slap their knees in the Bill Graham Auditorium. Along with stand-up, Clusterfest provides immersive experiences that will turn Civic Center Plaza into a Comedy Central theme park. Just as fans enter a re-creation of Moe's bar in Universal Studios’ Springfield or order a butter beer in Hogsmeade, Clusterfest goers can stride into a recreation of Paddy's Bar, from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and order a rum ham while playing Sunny in Philly trivia and Flipadelphia (a drinking contest). If you're more South Park, CO than Philly, PA, you can drink Tweek Bros Coffee, and hang at the memberberry ball pit while being serenaded by memberberries.
Better still, (IMHO) is the chance to live out your (my) fantasy that Elaine, George, Jerry and Kramer (before he was racist) are our best friends. Clusterfest is mounting a full-scale recreation of Jerry’s apartment at 129 West 81st Street. Brave souls can attempt to order soup from the original soup Nazi, Larry Thomas. For the rest of us, Festivus will be celebrated with the traditional airing of grievances feats of strength and the pole.
For the cultish fans of cult sit-coms, this kind of minutia immersion is comedy mecca. Comedy Central says that while the stand-up will be spectacular, these immersive experiences are the secret sauce. “We’re really excited to see people play in those worlds,” said Raizes.
Comedy Central is presenting the festival along with Superfly but earlier this week, Netflix is also going full throttle stand-up. This week, Netflix premieres Sarah Silverman’s new special, “Speck of Dust” and Hasan Minhaj ‘s new special, “Homecoming King.” Given that he just made fun of the president on C-span and she’s usually full of piss and vinegar, their Clusterfest shows (Minhaj on June 4 and Silverman on June 2) will probably be awesomely saucy.
For those not willing to get trampled trying to see stadium-fillers Kevin Hart and Jerry Seinfeld, here are a few more good bets:
Princess Featuring Maya Rudolph And Gretchen Liebrum. Rudolph and her college friend Gretchen formed Princess to express their mutual love of the funk star who rocked their girl world. It’s a sassy fan club cabaret performed by women acting like girls who are acting like women. This time, their tribute to Prince will have an extra special resonance. (June 4, 5:30pm)
Drunk History Dunk Tank. On Drunk History, Derek Waters' gets his friends smashed and invites them to expound on important historic events from the "everything's spinning" zone. At the Dunk Tank, you’ll need to get yourself smashed and then you can dunk Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Abe Lincoln or Julia Childs in an icon-sized tank.
Tig Notaro. In her HBO special and her Amazon series One Mississippi, Notaro is dry-witted and deadbeat funny. She disrobes to candidly discuss her double-mastectomy. But maybe she won’t at Clusterfest because summer in San Francisco is cold. (June 3, 3:30pm and 6:30pm)
Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People hosted by comedian Chris Gethard. A live version of the podcast in which Gethard (one of Time Out’s “10 best comedians of 2015”) spends one hour on the phone with one anonymous caller. (June 2, 5:45pm)
Gorburger Live With T.J. Miller. Silicon Valley’s stoner blowhard, T.J. Miller voices a giant blue extraterrestrial who hosts a Japanese television musical variety show after enslaving the shows staff. Like Drunk History, this show migrated from web series to Comedy Central. (June 2, 8:45pm)
Fred Armisten: The hipster humorist has several cult followings from his work on Portlandia, Documentary Now! SNL and Seth Myers. One only hopes that he will do his Barack Obama again. (June 3, 4:45pm and 8:45pm)
Rachel Bloom: From viral videos like "F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury” to comedy albums entitled Suck It, Christmas!!! (A Chanukah Album) to her CW musical parody sit-com Crazy Ex-Girlfriend about a kinda neurotic, kinda stalky Type A lawyer, Bloom is a wild card who will probably sing and curse. (June 3, 5:30pm)
Music: In addition to the headliners, Ice Cube and Tegan and Sara, check out Brooklyn synthpop duo Great Good Fine Ok, electro funk duo CHROMEO, comedic rapper Lil Dicky and garage rock soloist Ty Segall.