Will Durst

A conversation with the legendary San Francisco political comedian

This interview was just bumped by another publication due to the L.A. fires, so I’m posting it here.

Will Durst has been part of San Francisco ever since I can remember. By the time I moved to the city in 1983 he was already a major local comedy star, the political contemporary of Robin Williams, Paula Poundstone and Dana Carvey. Eventually I got to meet him, and his wife Debi, and the Dursts evolved into a sort of Bay Area comedy royalty, befriending mayors and senators, even owning the Holy City Zoo comedy club for awhile. Despite all of the fame, Will was always approachable and generous, and contributed a regular column to The Nose magazine, and appeared (as did Debi) at the Litquake festival several times. He has been sidelined by a stroke for five years, but he’s back on social media, and still as down-to-earth as ever. In 37 years of journalism this was the first time I’ve ever been asked, “So Jack, what kind of car are you driving?”

In October 2019, San Francisco comedian Will Durst suffered a stroke backstage before a performance at the Presidio Theatre. It seemed the most unlikely ending of a career for Northern California’s hardest working comic. After moving to the Bay Area in 1979, he had appeared on television over 800 times, from Letterman to Leno, Arsenio, PBS, C-SPAN, CNN, Fox News, and specials for HBO, Showtime and A&E. He performed several one-man shows including Off-Broadway, wrote three books, and since 2006 has hosted a political radio talk show with Willie Brown. The New York Times has called him “possibly the best political comic in the country.”

The stroke was hemorrhagic, paralyzing the left side of his body. A GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly $400,000 to help offset medical costs. He’s now confined to a wheelchair, but it hasn’t affected his brain. He can type, post on social media, still writes jokes in the moment, and smacks his wife’s arm if it’s a good one. Unlike other types of humor, political satire is always on the clock, and his phone pings constantly with news notifications. On January 19, Durst will headline a pre-inauguration comedy show as part of the SF Sketchfest. It’s only his second club appearance in five years.

This conversation took place in an extended-care facility in San Francisco, alongside his wife Debi, who also produces the city’s annual Comedy Day in Golden Gate Park.

 

This month Trump will be inaugurated. He’s already provided a lot of material for you, from his first administration:

“The hard part of living on the West Coast is no matter how early we wake up, he’s had a three-hour head start...to light the fuse to Armageddon.”

“Trump says he likes being unpredictable. You know what else is unpredictable? A sweaty stick of dynamite with a faulty fuse.”

“You know what worries me? Not the hair. But the brain underneath, that thinks the hair is cool.”

And now we’re looking at four more years of this guy. What goes through your mind?

It's like, how do you parody a parody? I know some percent of women voted for Trump. What were they thinking? 47% of Hispanic men voted for Forced Deportation. Deportations! How do you rationalize that in your head? Well, which was more important, the racism or the misogyny?

You’re originally from Milwaukee. Donald Trump won Wisconsin in both 2016 and 2024. Did his presidency affect relationships with your family? 

I still can’t talk to my cousins. It came because of the vaccine. They wouldn’t take the vaccine. “Well, you don’t know what’s in it.” Well, you don’t know what’s in the polio vaccine, but that helped. “What’s your flu vaccine made of? They got little robots? Microscopic robots that they put in the serum?”

That’s a national symptom right now. Some families have severed ties completely. A lot of Americans had to make that decision: do I still have family, or am I completely alone?

Yeah. My sister lives in Arkansas. She’s a speech therapist, married to a general practitioner. And my brother is an anesthesiologist married to a psychiatrist. So my mother has four doctors and two comics in the family, which is weird. My sister and my brother are both Republicans. My sister, it’s all about the babies. And my brother, it’s all about the money. So I’m cooking with my sister in her home, in the kitchen, and she’s got a little TV, and Trump comes on. And Penny goes, “Oh, that asshole.” She belongs to an evangelical church. It was like she had been rescued from the jaws of death. But—she still voted for him.

You’ve always had a strong sense of bipartisanship, and have never spared the peculiar mindset of San Francisco:

“In San Francisco, we have militant vegans who will punch you right in the face. It doesn’t hurt, but still...”

You have another bit about smoking in public: 

“Is that a cigarette?” 

“No. It’s a joint.” 

“It better be.” 

You know there’s gonna be a civil war. And the scary part is, that side has all the guns, but we have all the lesbians. I got banned from Berkeley because of that joke. We were at Freight & Salvage, performing there. And it wasn’t anybody in the audience that complained. It was the do-gooder volunteer ushers that complained. Debi did a joke about her Aunt Billie. 

Debi: I came on as a Filipino woman. And they were insulted. 

Just to clarify, Debi’s father was half-Filipino.

They thought she was denigrating it. But it was her Aunt Billie she was doing. And it’s a very good impression. We didn’t find out till afterwards. When they said you can’t come back.

You have an upcoming event January 19 at the Sketchfest. But it’s been over four years. How are you preparing to be back in public?

I haven’t been onstage in a long time. People say it’s different now. So I’m prepared. I got an opening statement where I say, listen, you know, my body’s getting better. Two months ago, I couldn’t move my arm, and now I can. Hopefully, someday I’ll be able to move my leg. And so (crosses arms), Wakanda forever. 

Is that cultural appropriation? If so, I apologize. I also apologize in advance for any microaggressions or white privilege or toxic masculinity that leaks out of this little pie-hole of mine. And I assure you, I meant no disrespect. So I apologize for it right up front. 

Are you familiar with the land acknowledgement? This has become fairly common in academia and the nonprofit world. Prior to an event, someone will come out and say, we just want to recognize that we are on traditional unceded Ohlone land. Or the Miwoks. It’s this long speech that has become popular within the last 5-7 years. And part of my brain—I know it’s totally incorrect—but I would think, well, there were plenty of animals here before the indigenous. So, we want to acknowledge the Ohlone. But before them, we also want to thank—

The pterodactyls. 

And the trilobites, they were here before any of us. 

Debi: And the fish that came out of the sea and decided to walk.

I googled all the possible dinosaurs that might have lived in the Bay Area. There weren’t very many.

Not a lot. But we had woolly mammoths.

We had mammoths, and the trilobites were everywhere. 

They’re like bugs. 

Debi: You couldn’t get rid of them. They’re the krill of the land. 

When did people lose their sense of humor? I got a bit called Eating with a Liberal, because I do a lot of benefits. Sometimes they’re for corporate organizations and they have a gala every year, or it’s for a nonprofit, and they want an emcee or some jokes told after dinner.

So I just meet with them for lunch and we go over the ground rules, and I try to convince them to put the raffle on after me instead of before me. And then about noon, we all go have lunch. I’ve eaten with them before, and we always go to this nice place. So I’m looking forward to it.

But we can’t go to the nice place, because the chef has been accused of harassment. But the bartender claims that the hostess was a stalker, but nobody believes the bartender, ever. So we go to this [other] place. And the reason we’re gonna get burritos there, is because they use the same tools that the Aztecs did in the 15th century to grind their masa. And I’m hoping that it’s similar tools, not the same tools.

And then, you know, the poor waiter: 

“No, you can’t have gluten-free tortillas, I’m sorry.” 

“Are these greens sustainably sourced?” 

“Yes.” 

“How much growth hormone in the dairy products?” 

“Just the normal amount. No more, no less.”

All the questions that he has to go through. And then, of course, the coffee order. “A double decaf, no foam, soy milk, butterfly-friendly latte with a twist of Meyer lemon, and a shade-grown cinnamon rinse, and make it trapezoidal.” You know? And so, Eating with Liberals. 

In the ’80s, I don’t remember you making jokes that targeted liberals as much. One of your classic lines was, “When President Reagan got shot, he told the doctors he didn’t even know he’d been shot. I don’t know about you but I want a president with a central nervous system.” Your targets were much more about conservative politics. 

It was hard to make fun of Jimmy Carter. You felt bad. It was like kicking a crippled puppy. With mange and a lazy eye. He meant well. He had such a good heart, and you could feel that it came across. Not like Dick Cheney, who’s had seven heart attacks, and he still lives. This guy’s so evil, Hell keeps spitting him back. 

Donald Rumsfeld was another piece of work. 

Rummy. He had that great known-unknown speech. 

He was so smug in front of the camera. You just hated him as soon as he started talking. 

Well, he was always the smartest guy in the room, even when he went to Stanford [the Hoover Institute]. It’s like Musk. Musk has the same kind of, “I am the smartest person in the room.” Also, everybody sucks up to the richest man in the world. It’s weird. It’s like they want something from them. He’s not gonna give you anything.

Elon doesn’t pay any taxes. He doesn’t do much philanthropy. At least Bill Gates tried to give free internet to the world. 

And he and his wife, trying to eradicate malaria. I mean, that’s a good thing.

You’ve lived in San Francisco since 1979, pretty much your entire adult life. If I were a young person today, interested in what I was interested in, I don’t know that I’d move here. I love the history of it, but how do you wrap your head around all that? 

Not as amenable as it was, to “frayed knots.” 

By that, you mean it was welcoming to misfits? 

Yeah. Because that’s what we were. Misfits and the outliers. There was something about San Francisco, that we accepted the odd. We encouraged it. We celebrated it. Beatniks and hippies and gays.

Do you think it’s still that way? 

Not as much, because there’s nowhere to live. I mean, back then, you could be a kid and scramble and still do stuff, but now you can’t. We know people who are our age, and still have roommates. Not spouses or girlfriends. Just roommates.

Debi: Or people who have broken up, but they still live together because they can’t afford to move. They can’t re-enter the housing market. 

Also, there’s a thing about San Francisco. Once you’ve lived here, no matter how long, a couple weeks, couple months, couple years, couple decades, you’re pretty much ruined for anywhere else. Can’t really go anywhere else.

In what way? What do you mean?

Tolerance. I mean, we don’t care. Come on in. Water’s fine. Red-bearded Lithuanian dwarves into golden showers? Welcome. This is your town. The water is fine. Come on in. We have a necrophilia support group here.

Is that true? 

No. I just made that up.

But I could see it. People sitting in chairs in a circle saying, okay, tell us what happened. “Well, I opened the coffin, and I just…I had second thoughts.” 

“It’s okay. You’re in a safe space. Dead or alive, we aim to arrive.” 

A necrophilia support group! Oh man, what has happened to this interview? 

We don’t have naked people anymore. 

There are still a few naked guys in the Castro.

That little parklet. The corner of Castro and Market. Two benches and a palm tree. The naked guys are all hanging out there every day. There’d be a gaggle. I don’t know if that’s the correct plural.

Debi: Perhaps “dangle”? 

Scott Wiener wrote a law that if you’re naked and you go in a restaurant, you gotta bring your own towel to sit on. That’s a law, in San Francisco. It’s unofficially known as the Skidmarks Law. They got Orphan Andy’s right there, the 24-hour restaurant. So naked guys would go in there and order food. And the management is going, come on, man. We don’t sell any desserts after you guys show up. And so Wiener wrote that law. Wiener’s Skidmarks Law. That's an actual law In San Francisco. 

That’s a great example of the micro-focus of San Francisco politics. Let’s ignore tons of problems other cities take care of, and concentrate on the minutiae. 

Yeah. What’s our solution to the homeless problem? Don’t call them homeless. They’re the “unhoused.” That's so much better. We were the ones that started the national trend of calling monkeypox, “MPox.” The people who had monkeypox felt bad that they had a disease named after monkeys. They were stigmatized. I mean, so were the monkeys. We also had people try to stop the 4th of July fireworks because it startles the birds. Forgive me, but they’re birds. Isn’t startlement one of their natural states? 

So how is life here in the facility?

The doctors ask me the same three questions every day. What’s your name? What day is it? And who is the president?

Every time I give them a different answer. The Cheeto. His Mangoness. The guy who dug up his ex-wife’s body and reburied it on his golf course so he could get a tax break. Nothing. Not even a smile.