SLO Comedy Festival

After years of planning, scheming and befriending a few guys on the base, the drop was finally scheduled to happen. He purchased his ticket bound for the SLO Coast, and set the wheels in motion, he took his seat on the second to the last car, near the back of the coach, one seat away from the cargo car. As darkness set in he made his move, sliding into the cargo car undetected, he found the massive crate filled with gold components. He grabbed one box of gold connectors, worth millions of dollars, planning to do the old switch-a-roo by replacing them with fool's gold. As he made his way back to his carriage, he slipped between the train cars and found himself suddenly holding on, to the railing of the exterior, for dear life. It was then that the woman swooped down to save him, but this was no lucky encounter, the woman knew the man, she was a waitress at the comedy club. She had watched him plan this caper for the last 5 years, she may have even known it better than he, and so as she swooped down to save him, she switched his box with her very own fool's gold, the man, well he was none the wiser. She melted down the gold and sold it and, using the money she opened up her own comedy club, right in downtown San Luis Obispo. That woman was my great aunt Gilda Radner, and she left that comedy club to our family, which we later sold to create, what is now, the SLO Comedy Festival.

True Story.

2018 ABOUT US...

Our story begins in the summer of 1933, off the coast of Southern California, on a beautiful quaint island. My great grandfather, a plutocrat in his own right, arranged a lunch meeting at the Catalina Casino with chewing gum mogul William Wrigley Jr. and award winning architect Simeon Charles Levi. The men were discussing new ways to increase chewing gum profits, in a very stagnant market on the central coast of California; more specifically, San Luis Obispo! The people there had a strange aversion to chewing gum. Wrigley saw this gap in the market and wanted to find a way to monetize his product. He thought perhaps a grand structure on the newly constructed California State Route 1 would raise chewing gum awareness, more importantly, get chewing gum on the proverbial map. Wrigley and Levi went back and forth for hours, at times becoming quite heated over the type of building materials to be used, it's size and overall appearance.

At the close of lunch, Wrigley suggested that they head over to the Pebbly Beach Quarry. They all agreed and moseyed over to look at one of the finest selection of slabs ever assembled in the history of our planet. After comparing rock samples, for the grand structure on the newly constructed California State Route 1. Levi realized that a pebble became lodged in his shoe, he stopped next to a wall near the crewman's time clock, put his hand on the wall to remove his shoe, but quickly pulled away after feeling something sticky make contact with his hand. He noticed a little piece of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum had been discarded by a quarry worker on the middle of the wall. The architect was struck by a vision, it was not a grand structure on the newly constructed California State Route 1 they needed, but an alley made of bubble gum. Historians now agree that if it was not for that pivotal moment, bubble gum would have been banned in the city of San Luis Obispo, and Bubblegum Alley would not exist.

Thanks to the efforts of Wrigley and Levi, gum sales in the city have grown into a multimillion dollar business. Men, women, and children of all ages enjoy this simple product to this day. In addition Levi might not have ever visited SLO, or built the Fremont Theater. My great grandfather might not have left me a huge, and I mean huge inheritance, with one caveat, it must be used to set up a comedy festival in San Luis Obispo!

You would not be reading this story today had all those events not actually happened. I'd like to thank my great grandfather J. Paul Getty for helping create the SLO Comedy Festival.

2017 ABOUT US...