by Mark McDermott
Once upon a time, there was a halfway homeless comedian. He didn’t sleep on the streets, except perhaps for an occasional blackout drunk, and he was extremely adept at talking his way onto people’s couches. This was all before Danno Carter found Pancho’s restaurant, and beneath the shark-bedecked stage made his stand, and became Manhattan Beach’s King of Comedy. On Monday night, Pancho’s Comedy Night celebrated its 9th anniversary, and oh how things have changed.
First of all, these days Carter is ensconced in an oceanside manse, courtesy of his fiancee (and attorney) Tiffany. His couch sleeping days are definitely over.
“Tiffany gets mad if I sleep on the couch,” Carter said. “I don’t sleep on the couch. I’ve got to make it to bed.”
The other thing that changed is Carter kind of cheated his way through the 8th Anniversary. The last few years left comedians everywhere twitching since they are the people most in need of stages on this planet, and were unable to perform on stages during the pandemic. Pancho’s was no exception. Pancho’s Comedy Night was on hiatus from March 2020 until June last year. Zoom does not work for comedy, because comedians, whether flailing or killing, feed off an audience’s energy.
Comedy was absent from Pancho’s, but Carter was not absent from performing comedy. He performed in parking lots throughout the pandemic.
“It was like a comic tailgate,” Carter said. “It kind of led to more gigs.”
He also performed at people’s homes and pretty much anywhere, and for anybody who would allow a poor, stage-less comedian to tell jokes.
“We did a show at Dr. Allen’s Strand house,” Carter said. “We did one at my friend Kitty’s dojo, the Undisputed Fight Academy on Manhattan Beach Boulevard. A few at the parking lot of Beach and Beverly on Sepulveda… We did multiple Zoom shows for private companies from my garage, which naturally has a brick wall and I put up a sign after the name of the club, Danno’s Girlfriend’s Garage.”
Alas, there was no getting around the fact that Carter missed the shark heads and friendly confines of Pancho’s, where comedy night has evolved into an actual world-class show, due to the fact that professional comedians from all over Los Angeles — itself the worldwide epicenter of comedy — are known to drop in. Monday nights have no competition from comedy clubs elsewhere. Comedians including Ali Wong, Trevor Wallace, and Jeff Dye, all of whom are national acts, frequently appear at Pancho’s.
And so the 9th Anniversary actually meant a little more to Carter and the comic community he has built at Pancho’s.
“I felt like I was kind of cheating calling it the nine-year anniversary when we technically missed a year, and a half from the lockdown,” Carter said. “But it was nine years since the day we started it, and have successfully had a show any day that was legal for us to do so within those nine years.”
At any rate, Comedy Night is back, hopefully to stay, at Pancho’s.
“I missed the fish on the ceilings,” Carter said. “I missed the cougars in the audience,” Carter said. “But most of all, I missed the valet guys not remembering who I am.”
Pancho’s Comedy Night starts at 9 p.m. every Monday night. Happy Hour is all night. 3615 Highland Ave. ER
