Homegrown comic headed to Cuba
The cabaret tables in the basement theater of Doc’s Lab were filling up nicely as San Francisco comedian Nato Green made his stoic march down the stairs and into the club. Outside, a sign parked on the neon-lit Columbus Avenue sidewalk proclaimed that the night’s comedy album recording was sold out. Green wordlessly motioned with his head that I should follow him to the club’s tiny dressing room, a space so small that the rather tall comic was forced to duck his head. He plopped down his bag and looked around the all-too familiar club.
“It’s not that I have stage fright,” Green said. “I just have a chronic highfunctioning baseline of anxiety and misery.”
He ordered a cup of coffee and continued, “I don’t want to go into this being too confident.”
Green might possess a permanent baseline of misery but I suspect he’s not lacking in confidence. I’ve seen the San Francisco native perform his stand-up on numerous occasions, and became a quick fan of his blunt, dry and aggressively progressive humor. The 42-yearold dad of twin girls has fashioned himself an almost fatherly comedic fixture in his hometown, having left San Francisco only twice: for college (in Oregon) and for a six-month New York writing gig on the underappreciated television show “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.”
Along the way, Green has worked as a union organizer, political activist and San Francisco Examiner columnist. And he’s about to leave it all behind — indefinitely.
This Sunday, the comedian and his young family will fly to Cuba, where Green’s wife will conduct academic research as a medical anthropologist, Green’s 9-year-olds will attend school, and Green, perennial deadpan voice of San Francisco values, will embark into the unknown. His past couple of comedy shows, recorded for posterity in a North Beach basement, felt a bit like the final act of “The Sound of Music” when the von Trapp family performed in that Nazi-run talent show before they disappeared into the Alps.
“I’m doing this,” Green said of his album recording, “because I’ve been doing comedy for years and now I’m about to stop.”
Though much of his work has focused on political humor and observation, the election of Donald Trump and subsequent policy changes have left Green with a head full of commentary and a sense of urgency.
“Given this political moment in history, I have s— to say,” Green said. “I know it’s going to bother me if I don’t get it out of my head.”
And get it out of his head, he did. The adorable Dominique Gelin warmed up the crowd before Green took the stage and unloaded a slow-paced, even-keeled tirade against Nazis, white people, the concept of positive blackface, the “All Lives Matter” movement, Marin County, small-town police incompetence and himself. At times, his audience was caught off guard, too cautious or sensitive to laugh. Green welcomed our discomfort, excited by his self-appointed task of challenging our perceptions while entertaining a packed house. Green never called out anyone in the audience, nor was he ever nasty or angry. Instead, the comedian called out our culture of complicity, our breezy lifestyle habits and laissez faire resistance. One bit about a pair of tech workers lamenting San Francisco’s lack of good barbecue was particularly biting. Green’s point, which he made with equal measures of fact and humor, was that when we kick out the majority of the city’s African American population, we also lose their delicious snacks.
“I have a ground rule for myself as a comic to say things I feel like only I can say,” Green said before his show. “I want to do the job of being a comic. I don’t want to be so marginal. But I also want to be me.”
Green’s is a voice I wish were more amplified, not necessarily one headed to Cuba. His Bernie Sanders-styled politics is a bit left of my own (Green once sent me a protest invitation with the note, “Want to come get arrested?!”) but his determined presence has helped keep us honest.
Much like the von Trapps, who escaped before they could receive their Nazi talent show winnings, Green won’t be in town when his comedy album is released this January. Instead, he’ll be championing his wife and daughters in Cuba, likely offstage and under the radar.
“There’s a homegrown comedy scene,” Green said of Havana, “but it’s in Spanish.” “Do you speak Spanish?” I asked. “Yes.” He grinned. “With sufficient rum.”