Coming up, Juan Carlos Arenas’ neighborhood of Moreland was rough. His uncles were not in the gangs … but they were not out of them either. When they took him along on their long summer “camping” trips to Emerald Triangle grow sites, he says, they packed semi-automatic rifles, “you know, just in case they saw a bear.”
When, at the impressionable age of 13, Arenas was beaten up by young wannabe gangsters, he begged his mother for a pair of boxing gloves. Instead, Salome Arenas armed him with a book of jokes, setting her son on a different path.
Arenas idolized Jerry Seinfeld—and still does, describing him as “the greatest comic in the world—polished, clean, articulate. His jokes don’t have a bit of fat on them.” He loved Seinfeld’s small, slice-of-life topicality—jokes about shoe laces and airplane peanuts.
But still he couldn’t see himself in those small, close, fully lit, intimate supper club gigs staged at the start of each episode of Seinfeld. He was just too different than the white and urban, middle class Jewish comic. It was not until he saw George Lopez stand up at The Punch Line that he realized that the dream might be his (let’s say it again: representation matters).
Juan Carlos Arenas has been a stand-up comedian for 14 years now, seven of them paid. Though he is quick to admit, remodeling old houses pays the bills. For two years, he has owned his own business, the California Construction Group.
Cincinnatus Hibbard: Tell me about being funny.
Juan Carlos Arenas: Comedy’s not about the jokes—not really. It’s about rhythm and timing. If you have those two things, you can say anything that’s on your mind, and people will find it funny. They’ll eat it up.
You also have a theater background?
Being in the theater is where I learned how to really talk to an audience. That’s what really made my comedy career explode.
You helped start the second wave of the North Bay comedy scene.
Jabari Davis [an established San Francisco comic] told us to go to local restaurants and ask to put on a comedy night—not successful restaurants—restaurants that are empty, dead. If you bring out 20 people on a Tuesday, they will be very happy. That’s how it started.
Shout out some of the stars of the North Bay scene.
Jon Lehre, Brian Thomas, Cassey Williams, Josh Argile, Steve Brunner, Chris Ferdinason and Engin Yeisylemis.
These are intense, political times. Tell me about the part the stand-up has to play.
… No matter how big the war is—no matter how big the guns are, the arts will save us. Look at the impact Pablo Picasso’s one painting [Guernica] had on the Spanish Civil War—it was so powerful. It changed lives. At the end of the day, no matter how loud the speakers are, from the politicians that are just spilling out garbage, if we can come together as a community and just listen to each other—which is what stand-up really is—we will get to know each other enough that we will become a family. And once we become a family, no one will be able to f*** with us. My job is to tell you how I am, and how we are not so very different.
Learn more: Juan Carlos Arenas plays out all over the Bay Area, but he most frequently ‘works out’ Fridays at the Barrel Proof Lounge in Santa Rosa and Tuesdays at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley. He can be contacted through his instagram: @arenasjuancarlos.
