The Brief

In the new Netflix competition show Funny AF, host Kevin Hart travels to the stand-up comedy hubs of New York City, Chicago and his adopted hometown of Los Angeles (no travel required) in search of “the next stand-up superstar.”

Ask which of those cities is the best for stand-up comedy today and you’re likely to have a debate on your hands.

L.A.’s comedy scene could arguably trace its roots back to the early days of Hollywood and comedic film production here, but for stand-up specifically, 1972 is when two major things happened — Tonight Show host Johnny Carson moved his massively influential late-night show from New York to Burbank, and The Comedy Store, the now-world-famous comedy club dedicated to stand-up and the first of its kind on the West Coast, opened on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.

In recent years, though, L.A.’s comedy scene has gotten a bit of a bad rap — with lots of talk of what feels like everyone leaving, film and TV jobs not being what they were pre-COVID (or pre-2023 strikes) — along with a long-standing reputation among comics that L.A. is a tough city to get stage time in.

Still, L.A.-based comedians Felicia Folkes, Steve Furey and Ray Lau say that for them, L.A. is the place to be. The three were among the group of 44 comics selected to compete in Funny AF for the grand prize — their own Netflix comedy special.

All three made it into the top 10, performing in front of crowds including guest judges like Chelsea Handler, Kumail Nanjiani and Keegan-Michael Key but were cut before making it to the final two episodes (which will film live May 4 and 5 during the Netflix is a Joke Festival in Los Angeles).

Folkes, Furey and Lau spoke with LAist about their experiences competing on the show and why they think L.A.’s stand-up comedy scene is still the one to beat.

The following responses have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Steve Furey

Steve Furey in "Funny AF with Kevin Hart" on Netflix.

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Steve Furey has been doing stand-up for 15 years and is originally from Northern California but now calls L.A. home. In the first round of competition on Funny AF, he got one of the most glowing reviews of all the L.A. comedians (with Hart describing Furey’s first set as “flawless”).

He told LAist that there’s a real camaraderie among comics in L.A. that other cities can’t match:  ”There's a couple people that everyone hates, you know … but overall, you're competing with people, but in the end [when] you see someone win, I don't really get mad about it and I don't think a lot of people [in L.A.] do.”

Steve Furey:  A lot of people since the pandemic have kind of s--t on L.A., especially some people that decided to move to other places …

[But] this is a great comedy scene. The best guy in that small town still moves here. The best person in New York a lot of times at some point’s going to still end up here. Sure, there was an exodus of a bunch of “podcast comedians” during the pandemic, but it allowed the scene to grow in a way that it hasn't seen in a long time. You know, there's a lot of younger people like Ray [Lau] now coming up and showing that this is a fantastic scene and it can hang with any other scene. 

We still have legendary clubs like The Laugh Factory. We still have legendary clubs like The Hollywood Improv. We still have the, in my opinion, greatest comedy club in the f--king world, The Comedy Store. They're still here, and we got other places popping up.

This is a great place to come [for] finishing — it's almost like you're searing steak. It's almost done, you put it in the oven for the last hour. That last hour, that heat that this place has is L.A. And that's how you can become great. It cuts the fat off the bulls--t of your act and it makes it great.

I'm proud to be from this scene. I will not leave the scene 'cause guess what? It's still f--king L.A. The ocean's right there. I look at the Hollywood sign, it’s beautiful. The weather's beautiful. The women are beautiful. The weed is wonderful. The comedy's awesome. This place f--king rocks and everywhere else is great, too, but I've been to those other cities and their weather sure f--king sucks sometimes. But I'm looking out right now and it's a blue sky, again. 

Ray Lau

Ray Lau in "Funny AF with Kevin Hart" on Netflix.

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Ray Lau, the son of immigrant parents from Hong Kong (who are featured briefly in the Netflix AF series when Lau calls them after each successful round) is originally from Seattle, but now based in L.A.

Lau has been doing stand-up for less time than Furey and Folkes but got glowing reviews from the Funny AF judges, too, with his fellow comics also praising him for his ability to get his material seen on social media and translate those views into ticket sales.

“It’s totally a grind,” Lau told LAist. “But at the same time, to be honest, I prefer it. Because I'm not really sure I would've cracked through in the old world where bookers and gatekeepers could decide whether or not you could move through the ranks.  And in this way, at least all of it is technically up to you. I mean, it's extremely exhausting and stressful and difficult and nearly impossible, but it is up to you.”

As for what Lau makes of the stand-up scene in L.A.:

Ray Lau: L.A. gets a lot of s--- talked [about it]. And in New York, there's a lot of good comics and there's a lot of stage time there, and that's good. I just like where I'm at. You know, sometimes the grass isn't greener. I like my life here … I like working on my standup. I like my friends here. I've gotten to know the bookers and other comics and it's just nice. 

Yeah, you might not be able to get up here as much as other cities, but the talent here is really, really good. Sometimes you're on shows and you're getting s---- on by these incredible comics and you're still feeling inspired all the time. There's still other people who are role models here that you can try to chase after, and there's still a lot to improve here.

Also I think all of us have a little bit of aspiration — we'd be down to be in movies or a TV show. That'd be kind of cool too, at some point — and it's just happening in L.A. I love it here.

Felicia Folkes

Felicia Folkes in "Funny AF" on Netflix.

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Ser Baffo/Netflix

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Felicia Folkes hails from Inglewood and has been doing stand-up comedy for about 12 years. In addition to the industry-wide disruption that the COVID pandemic caused, Folkes also spent about a year-and-a-half away from the stage while she underwent treatment for breast cancer.

Now, it’s something that she incorporates into her act. Folkes told LAist, “ I'm grateful to the gods and the energies that I have this creative outlet, honestly. Because I see a lot of people go through this and they don't have a way to express themselves about it. I don't take that lightly.”

As for why she’s stayed in L.A., apart from her family being here, Folkes said:

Felicia Folkes: I love comedy and [L.A.] has a great history. I can get up [on stages] here.  I know people complain a lot [about not being able to get stage time], but I think that's a skill issue. I've never had a problem getting up in my city. I don’t know what to tell these people.  I started doing open mics at Westside Comedy Theater, which is a smaller club. And so if you know where to go and if you know where to do — [I think people] wanna go to Hollywood and go on the main stage immediately at The Comedy Store. And it's like, ‘No.’ Like Ray [Lau] just sold out the main room at The Comedy Store — How many years have you been doing it? It took you a long f--king time to get there.

But people wanna come to the city and just get all the access. And it's like, I've been doing it for 12-plus years. It takes years and years to build these things. And for me, I'm from here. I've been doing comedy here since I was under age, like 17. I've been around, so I feel like I put time in the city. This is my city. And honestly I think they're kind of just jealous, all the other cities.  I think they're haters.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”