Dave Chappelle Calls San Francisco ‘Half ‘Glee,’ Half Zombie Movie’ in Secret Show-Turned-Tirade
Dave Chappelle used to see San Francisco as his personal cash cow – now, he says it’s a Gotham City-level Gomorrah.
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Five months ago, Chappelle earned the ire of the Golden City by surprising his audience at the Chase Center with a cameo from new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, shortly after Musk laid off about half of Silicon Valley. The appearance drew a sea of boos that derailed the show, and, possibly, Chappelle’s affinity for the city that once was a bastion of Chappelle’s Show fans who would pay half of their exorbitantly high rent check just to see him in concert.
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This past Thursday, Chappelle played a last-minute show at The Masonic where he unloaded on the NorCal audience for allowing their city to sink so far – “What the f— happened to this place?” Chappelle exclaimed, saying that, in recent years, San Francisco has turned into “Half Glee, half zombie movie.” It’s bad business sense for him to say that at a secret set for adoring fans – his bosses at Netflix would pay a premium for that kind of pitch.
During the set, Chappelle bragged of how San Francisco used to be one of his most reliable tour stops – he recalled “using the city like a goddamn ATM” in his early career before his tenor on the city changed drastically. Chappelle told the story of how he went to a restaurant in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood where he saw a homeless person shitting on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Chappelle said that all of San Francisco is now the Tenderloin, joking, “Y’all n— need a Batman!”
One heavily interactive audience member asked Chappelle if he recalled a viral video wherein an art gallery owner was filmed spraying a homeless woman with a hose outside of his storefront. Chappelle initially pretended not to have heard of the San Francisco story that received national attention, then clarified that he did, in fact, watch the video – about a hundred times.
Maybe Chappelle and his buddy Musk can pool their resources and fix up San Francisco by following the way Chappelle bought half of Yellow Springs, Ohio – looking at SF’s real estate market, the two of them combined could go in on a couple of condos.