Kung Pao Comedy

Six miles and a world away from the comedy clubs of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, L.A.’s next great stand-up scene grows in a cramped attic above a Chinese restaurant.

Photos by Damon Casarez

Comedian Dana Gould has spent thirty years in comedy, won two Emmy Awards for writing The Simpsons and played “The Summer George” on Seinfeld. Yet on a chilly Thursday night in December, Gould is in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, wearing an oversized coat and more than a couple days of stubble, standing in front of a red velvet curtain in the attic of The Palace, a Chinese restaurant.

Dishes clank downstairs as the restaurant staff attends to the few tables still finishing their soup dumplings and kung pao chicken. The crowd upstairs is a little younger, a bit more hipster than the patrons below. Many sip cheap beer out of bottles. One guy in the corner eats a pile of lo mein out of a Styrofoam take-out container.

A phone rings downstairs. “Who would call a Chinese restaurant?” Gould asks sarcastically, continuing his set.

“I actually started my stand-up career in a Chinese restaurant,” he tells the crowd, “which shows how little I’ve progressed as a co…