Jose Simon

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Jose Simon (1945? - April 19, 2008) was an American comedian and musician who founded Comedy Day in San Francisco and aided that city's reemergence of stand-up comedy starting in the 1970s.

Simon was born to a show business family of Cuban extraction in Mexico City ^[1], and was godson of film legend Cantinflas. He left Mexico City for San Francisco in 1959 ^[2] and attended Galileo High School and San Francisco City College.

Within a couple years of arriving, he started performing with bands in the city's North Beach area, including a group called the Four of a Kind, which also featured future Tower of Power vocalist Rick Stevens and a founding member of Santana, conga player Michael Carabello ^[3].

Eventually he joined his first Latin Rock group, SAPO, and performed on their first album — for which he was later inducted into The Kings of Latin Rock.

Sometime in the early 1970s, Simons became involved with comedy through improvisation workshops conducted by The Committee and its director, Del Close ^[4]. This was also where Simon first met the young Robin Williams ^[5].

Simon later suggested performing comedy at the Holy City Zoo, a folk music club that ultimately hosted stand-up comedy full-time for more than a decade, and become a nationally known social center of stand-up comedy^[6].

Simon then began pushing the idea of a free, outdoor, daytime comedy “concert.” This came to fruition as Comedy Day, first occurring in Golden Gate Park On July 11, 1981.

On February 16, 1994, the City of San Francisco declared Jose Simon Day. On September 30, 2007, before the 27th annual Comedy Day audience, Jose Simon received the San Francisco Stand-up Comedy Legend Award^[7].