I performed English stand up comedy in Porto, Portugal. How dope is that?

Wow, I cannot even believe how much cool shit is happening right now. I traveled to Porto to do stand up comedy. My first time traveling for a comedy show. Someone wants to make a short film out of one of my jokes. It’s kind of still an idea at this point, so I don’t really have much to share. I’m hosting another comedy show in about a week. Even more trips for shows on the horizon. But I have to say this Porto trip was really special.

So Gonçalo Salazar, a Portuguese comedian from Porto, initially reached out to me on Instagram to tell me about the show he’s setting up in Porto.

Can I just say for a second how much I hate how much I love Instagram? I’m not really a social media kinda guy but the app is simple as fuck and it does what it’s supposed to do really well. And it got me a comedy gig in Porto, so I’m sold on it at this point.

Anyway, I ran off to Porto for a few days arriving on June 3rd. Arriving on June 4th. Somehow I ended up on Rua dos Caldeireiros again which is a cute little street right by everything. Porto isn’t a huge city and it’s really easy to walk around to most everything. At least the things I enjoy. I mean, I could say that about Lisbon too for the most part, but Porto has a totally different vibe. The river is narrower than the river in Lisbon, and you can see the people across it in Vila Nova de Gaia going about their business. My favorite view is from the bridge near the São Bento railway station. No clue what the name is. Go check that out at sunset and tell me it isn’t amazing.

One of my favorite things about Porto is all the Harry Potter associations. First off, J.K. Rowling lived in Porto for a while and she drew a lot of inspirations from her time there. Some scenes in the Harry Potter movies were filmed there. The wardrobe for the wizard students (or whatever they are. I never really got into it) was inspired by the school uniforms worn by college students here in Portugal. They really wear fucking capes and look like Harry Potter wizards running around everywhere. It is absolutely fucking hilarious, and you can catch tourists lining up to take pictures with random college kids because of it. I watched a student get surrounded by a group of tourists all freaking out about her uniform. After the tourists finished taking pictures with her and ran off she started freaking out about what just happened with her friend. It was adorable.

So the evening of the 4th arrives and I finally get to meet Gonçalo at Selina Porto. We walked together to have dinner with all the other comedians first. Within about 20 seconds of meeting all the other comedians, I decided to flex my Portuguese by sharing some cool swear words I know. One of those being “filho de puta”. Which, when I said it, sounded more like “filet de puta”. And everyone started laughing. Letting everyone know I’m a complete idiot within moments of meeting them is a special skill I have. Everything was awesome from that point on the evening kept getting better and better.

So the other comedians I had a chance to meet were Mário Moreira, Eduardo Marques, Fredy, João Moreira, Jorge Gonçalves. They were all doing English stand up comedy for their first time that evening. At least I think all of them. At least most for more of them it was. How scary must that be to do stand up comedy in a non-native language? It’s incredible that they all challenged themselves to do it and I was glad to be there with them supporting English comedy in Portugal.

After dinner, we all headed back to Selina for the show. I was lucky because my friend Janka was able to be there and watch me perform for the first time. It was nice to have a familiar face in the crowd and I hadn’t seen her in a while. And now it was time for comedy! Guess how it turned out? A bunch of Portuguese comedians doing English stand-up comedy for the first time… it turned out awesome! The crowd was feeling it. There was such great energy in the room. All the comedians had their own style and brought something different to make the entire night interesting. Lots of risky humor but people really enjoyed it.

I closed the show that evening. I did alright. I finally have like a solid 10-minute set developed that I’m comfortable with. I could probably go up and do it any night no problem. I like that comfort. When I was doing new jokes every show it was really stressful. Now I have a handful of jokes that I feel confident will work more often than not. I could have done a lot more. Gonçalo gave me the green light for the evening. I had a lot more written. I just need to spend more time memorizing. I kinda got lost in the end and just finished with a couple of extra jokes after finishing what I had planned. I could have definitely gone another 5-7 minutes had I prepared better. I’ll get there.

After the show, Fredy invited Janka and I to go hang out with some of his friends. We stayed out pretty late and it was cool to have a chance to chill. I was still working during the day each day, so I didn’t spend a whole lot of time enjoying the city. The city is great. The people I met were awesome. The show was wonderful. So wonderful in fact, Gonçalo has informed me that Selina Porto has approved two more shows in July. So I’ll be going back up to Porto twice hopefully. There’s also another show this month on the 18th, but I’m hosting a show here in Lisbon that day. Otherwise, I would totally go. So this is my first time traveling for a show, but already not my last!