Cobb's Comedy Club

Cobb's has moved twice and outlived two rooms. It opened in 1982 as Cobb's Pub on Chestnut Street in the Marina, 110 seats, run by Ron Kakiki and the late John Cantu with an in-house improv troupe called Femprov. Tom Sawyer turned up in San Francisco the same year hoping to do stand-up, started booking the club instead, and was a co-owner by 1987 - the year Cobb's lost its Chestnut Street lease and moved to The Cannery at Fisherman's Wharf, where it ran just under two hundred seats for fifteen years.

The Cannery years ended badly and not quite the way the story is usually told. A fire broke out in March 2002 at the Argonaut Hotel construction site across the courtyard and shut Cobb's for a month. It was the litigation that followed, not the fire itself, that drained the club and ended in eviction. Seven months later it reopened on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, with the stage designed by the theatre veteran Kim Tolman. Live Nation bought it in 2005 and Sawyer stayed on to book it.

The room seats 400 and takes 770 standing, with a mezzanine and a marquee on Columbus. Robin Williams played here almost every year from 1983, often turning up unannounced. Jim Carrey has credited the club with starting his career.