Paula Poundstone’s start and heart in S.F.
Paula Poundstone doesn’t remember everything about her time in San Francisco in the 1980s. The comedy sets, places she lived and the money she made are mostly a blur.
But she remembers the moment the city captivated her for good.
“When I got to San Francisco, I just fell in love with it,” Poundstone says, during a podcast interview at The San Francisco Chronicle, hours before her New Year’s Eve show at the Nourse Theater. “I always liken it to when Dorothy stepped out of the black-and-white house in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ I stepped out of the Greyhound bus; it was
“The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness” By Paula Poundstone. (Algonquin Books; 288 pages; $25.95)
over on Mission Street. … It wasn’t the most glamorous part of the city for sure, but I had a sense early on that I was where I belonged.”
Happiness is a common subject in Poundstone’s life lately. She wrote a book about it in 2017, “The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness.”
And more than a decade and a half after a high-profile arrest threatened her career, the comic has settled into a groove. She has been perform-
ing at theaters across the country, continues as a popular panelist on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” (celebrating its 20th anniversary this week) and adjusts to life with her three children in the adult world.
Poundstone, 58, moved to the Bay Area at age 20, when she had difficulty finding a place in what she described as the chauvinistic Boston comedy scene. After buying a onemonth Greyhound bus pass to travel the country — she would plan late-night round trips to random cities so she could sleep on board — Poundstone says she arrived in San Francisco on Nov. 4, 1980, the day Ronald Reagan was elected.
In a fateful meeting that seems impossible in the era of Airbnb and skyrocketing rents, Poundstone met a complete stranger at a political rally, they hit it off, and the platonic new friend let her stay on his living room couch.
“This was sort of a ‘Tales of the City’ kind of times,” Poundstone says, referencing the Armistead Maupin novels that were originally published as columns in The Chronicle. “There was a feeling that people, even (those) who had gotten here recently, enjoyed making the next wave feel welcome.”
From there it was a wonder of comedy brotherhood and sisterhood; Robin Williams was a friend, who let her stay in his basement and introduced the young comic to his management. Poundstone still smiles when she talks about it today. (Poundstone looks at a 1984 Chronicle photo where she bounces on a trampoline, and declares it was shot in the backyard of Dana Carvey’s house.)
The comedian performed at seminal comedy club the Other Cafe two days after she arrived, and she became a regular host. Poundstone developed a style in similar small clubs around the city that involved riffing with the audience and her environment, which other comics in particular seemed to admire. Fellow San Francisco comedian and “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” star Greg Proops remembers her sets at the Other Cafe, where she would joke about the Muni bus line that passed the club on the corner of Carl and Cole streets.
“She’d go, ‘Have you ever noticed that nobody is ever on the 37-Corbett?’ ” Proops recalls. “And within her act, there would stop the 37-Corbett, and there would be one person sitting there. It would get a huge laugh.”
But nothing was easy. Two landmark achievements in early 1984 — Poundstone’s first appearance on “Late Night With David Letterman,” and a stand-up performance on “Saturday Night Live” — were negligible boosts to her career.
“I’m thinking, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m going to wake up and be a household name,’ ” Poundstone remembers. “I’m trying to decide where to put my pool and my chimpanzee and my otter, which was always part of my plan. And then you wake up the next day, and nothing is different. … You’ve still got to work on the road. You’ve still got to do your thing.”
Poundstone eventually moved to Los Angeles in the mid-’80s, and enjoyed a slow-building success. By the mid-1990s she was a top traveling comedy act, able to book big theaters such as the Warfield in San Francisco. But after the arrest in 2001 for driving drunk and child endangerment — she was fostering children at the time — Poundstone went into recovery and pleaded no contest to one felony, with no jail time.
Poundstone’s 2004 book, “There’s Nothing in This Book I Meant to Say,” covers that period with a frank honesty. Her new book begins with Poundstone living a scaleddown life, moving to a rental house in Santa Monica and searching for happiness.
Poundstone documents taking her eldest daughter on a backpacking trip, renting a Lamborghini for a day (a particularly stressful chapter), and punishing herself in martial arts and swing dancing classes. Through the experiments, she is remarkably open about money problems and the struggles of a single mother, with her three adoptive children leaving the nest and 15 cats going nowhere.
“People talk about their bucket lists. I’ve got two things I want to do: One is outlive my debt, and one is outlive my vision. I hope my eyes can hold up until I’m done with them,” Poundstone says.
In the book and in real life, though, the comedian is never far from finding a vein of humor. She recalls a disastrously hilarious time opening for the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia in the 1980s, and failed workouts while watching the old KPIX aerobics program “Morning Stretch.”
She’s particularly positive these days about “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” where she’s encouraged to riff. (Poundstone created a NPR podcast of her own last year, “Live From the Poundstone Institute,” spawned by her regular appearances on the show — currently on hiatus.)
And while the crowds are much bigger than the ’80s, there are days when it still feels like the Other Cafe. The foundation Poundstone built in San Francisco still works the best for her.
“I learned to work with this lack of preparation, for one thing,” Poundstone says. “I never memorized a set. To this day, if I try to do that, I feel put in a box and not comfortable. It takes away the thing that I think is best about me.”