Clement St Comedy

Two doors down from the Zoo

Clement Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues has been a comedy address for half a century. Number 408 was the Holy City Zoo, a club with a maximum occupancy of 78 that opened in the mid-1970s under Robert Steger, passed to Peter Reines in 1975 and called itself the comedian's clubhouse. Robin Williams used it as a neighbourhood rehearsal space, running character after character at what the television producer George Schlatter called machine-gun speed, and Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Bobby Slayton, Aisha Tyler and The Amazing Johnathan all worked its tiny stage. The Zoo closed for good in 1994 with a 24-hour farewell marathon that ran from midnight on 29 August into 30 August. Williams said losing it was like someone pulling the life support on an aunt, and called the room the womb. A short-lived revival as The New Zoo put Thursday open mics back into the building from 18 January 1996, when the premises traded as the Seaport Tavern, but it did not last.

Next door at 406 is the building that now carries the Thursday-night habit. It opened as the Last Day Saloon in 1973 and kept that name until 2011, when it closed, was extensively renovated and relaunched as the Rockit Room. In 2013 it was renamed again as Neck of the Woods, and it still describes itself as a live-music venue first. Around the gigs it runs a Wednesday open mic, karaoke, salsa nights and the weekly comedy show that borrows the street's name. Clement St Comedy happens in the downstairs room, and the venue's own listing gives it a plain billing: the best of San Francisco stand-up comedy.

The Godfather moves to the Avenues

The constant at Clement St Comedy is its host. Tony Sparks is originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, worked as a stand-up in New York and on the road, and had been in San Francisco for more than 20 years when Hoodline interviewed him in August 2015. He has said the local scene was unwelcoming when he arrived, with a dominant group holding court at the Holy City Zoo, so rather than compete for their stage time he built his own rooms. The first was an open mic at the Luggage Store art gallery. Then Jeff Zalles, who owned Brainwash, a cafe and laundromat at Seventh and Folsom in SoMa, suggested a show on April Fools' Day. It went up on 1 April 1999 and ran every Thursday until the cafe closed in 2017.

That run is why the nickname stuck. Sparks has said the Godfather of Comedy tag started as an insult about his monopoly on open mics, with comics joking that they had to bow and kiss his ring for a slot. He is also called the Don King of the Open Mic, and his catchphrases, HUMANS, listen and sugar nasty, have ended up on bracelets. By 2015 he counted roughly eight Brainwash regulars who had gone on to Comedy Central, among them Louis Katz, Mo Mandel, Jasper Redd, Sheng Wang, Brent Weinbach and Al Madrigal, who became a senior correspondent on The Daily Show. Paul Mooney, Hannibal Buress and Faizon Love dropped in as guests. When SFGATE revisited the story in April 2026 it added Ali Wong, Hasan Minhaj, W. Kamau Bell and Frankie Quiñones to the list of comics who performed there early on.

His hosting philosophy has not changed in the move from a laundromat to a basement bar. In 2015 he described the aim as an inclusive and encouraging room, the one place a comic could come to and know it was going to be okay. That is the ethic Clement St Comedy inherits: the host is the fixed point, and the comics rotate around him.

How the show is built

The format is the same every week. Doors open at 6.45pm, the show starts at 7pm sharp and it finishes at 8.30pm, which makes it one of the earlier comedy nights in the city and a 90-minute commitment rather than a late one. It runs downstairs at 406 Clement Street, is strictly 21 and over with government photo ID checked at the door, and the house rules are the venue's standard ones: no outside food or drink, no re-entry once inside, no smoking indoors. Street parking on Clement Street is limited and metered, with public lots nearby, and the ground-floor entry gives only limited wheelchair access, so the venue asks people who need accommodations to phone ahead.

The venue and its ticket partners describe the bill as a lineup of local and touring comedians with different featured comics each week, and the copy that circulates on listing sites frames it as rising stars alongside established names. None of the listings opened for this profile publish the individual acts in advance, so the week-to-week bill is only knowable on the night or through the venue directly. What is fixed is the shape: a host-led showcase, a handful of feature spots, one room, no headliner marketed above the show's own name.

Pricing is unusually low for a San Francisco comedy ticket and varies by week. On the Neck of the Woods calendar the 10 September and 17 September 2026 shows were listed at no charge, while 24 September was listed at 12.33 dollars through TicketWeb. The show also appears on Consequence Live's listings for 22 October 2026, which confirms it is booked through the autumn.

Where things stand in 2026

The most recent development around the show is not at the show itself but in its host's other life. On Friday 17 April 2026 Sparks revived the Brainwash open mic as The Wash, at SF Laundromat on Sutter Street in Lower Nob Hill, and several dozen comics turned up to perform. The owner, Wissam Habr, said afterwards that he was interested in continuing the nights. SFGATE's report of 21 April 2026 set out where Sparks now works each week: he hosts shows at the Orbit Room and at Neck of the Woods, and he presents a public-access television programme in Berkeley. Clement St Comedy is the Neck of the Woods half of that schedule.

The same piece carried a line from Sparks that explains the room's tone better than any listing. He said Brainwash was meant to be a place to grow and develop, not a place to end up, and that he got stuck there because he had no money. The comment is rueful rather than bitter, and it is why the Clement Street show reads as an extension of that job rather than a step up from it. He is still doing the work of the room, week after week, on a street that has known this kind of room before.

A night downstairs, and what nobody has written yet

There is a gap in the record that should be stated plainly. No published critical review of Clement St Comedy was found in researching this profile, and the audience quotes that circulate on ticket resale sites are aggregator copy rather than attributed reactions. What can be said with confidence comes from the venue's own listings and from reporting on its host: it is a 90-minute, host-led showcase in a basement bar room, it ends at 8.30pm, it is over-21s only, it is often free or cheap, and it is fronted by a man whose previous Thursday-night room produced a measurable share of the comics who later carried San Francisco's reputation on to television.

For anyone weighing a Thursday in the Inner Richmond, the practical points are these. Arrive at 6.45pm, because the show starts on time and there is no re-entry. Do not expect a printed bill in advance. Expect the host to be the constant, the comics to change weekly, and the finish to leave the rest of the evening open on a street where the previous comedy room, two doors along, closed more than three decades ago.