Picture by Sarah Kinbar
Orlando comedian David Jolly provides a established beside the cherished Shit Sandwich sandwich board
Orlando’s comedy scene owes some of its DNA to Matt Gersting’s brainchild, a showcase identified as Shit Sandwich. A longtime fixture at Bull & Bush in the Milk District, Gersting introduced his exhibit at the venue on June 2, 2012. His near close friend Larry Fulford hosted on that night time, and the pub was packed. Akeem Woods and Tom Feeney were being no-shows, which they hardly ever lived down.
Fulford was close to at the commencing, and recollects Gersting’s intentions as properly as any one could: “He was just like a large comedy connoisseur. We both of those played in bands in our twenties in Orlando, but we never ever actually became pals until finally stand-up. … He was at Bull & Bush a whole lot, and I just feel he observed an prospect there to run a comedy area at a bar the way he would want a single run.”
“Back in the working day, there weren’t as a lot of showcases. He required some thing that wasn’t a mic, was a very little far more vetted, but also normal plenty of that people who were being seeking to get genuinely fantastic at comedy would have one more location to do it,” remembers Fulford.
Ross McCoy, at the time the 3rd mic on the podcast A Mediocre Time with Tom and Dan, had in no way been to Bull & Bush ahead of the very first Shit Sandwich. He saw a post on Fb that led him to the pub.
“I came as a result of the entrance door exactly where the stage is. I was five minutes late, so like, you know, right at the beginning of Larry’s set, and it was packed. So I experienced to stroll in like, by way of a bunch of people to the back, to discuss to Matt about likely up.”
Aaron “Salty Aaron” Saudargas, who at that time had not however started out performing stand-up, was in the audience in all those early days. “The to start with decades of Shit Sandwich were what we now take into consideration to be a well known time in Orlando comedy, with comedians like Heather Shaw, Larry Fulford and, definitely, Matt Gersting on the showcase. I would see Matt get up there and murder for 5 minutes. Like it was almost nothing.”
Gersting’s room nurtured homegrown expertise, and a number of Central Florida comedians who came up at Shit Sandwich went on to do massive matters.
Shaw, who did a set there for the initial time in 2015, remembers Gersting warmly: “He was extremely nice to everybody taking into consideration that he had almost certainly one particular of the greatest rooms. And he was great. I was so new in comedy. He was super welcoming and gave information. His area was the top of all comedy.”
Internet hosting tasks rotated up until finally 2015, and by the time comic and podcaster Derrius “D-Rugg” Boston did his first set, Ross McCoy was the sole host.
Boston was a guest on Tom and Dan, and realized McCoy. “Ross McCoy is my canine around from the Tom and Dan show. I made use of to often convey to him, Hey, 1 working day I am likely to do comedy. I’m going to comedy. So he was just like, you know, I host this shit named Shit Sandwich. I was placing him off and putting him off and I last but not least got there.”
Gersting died in April of 2016. He was remembered this way by Orlando Weekly:
Gersting was accountable for environment up the Shit Sandwich comedy showcase at the Bull & Bush, a transfer which was instrumental to the comedy renaissance the metropolis has seasoned about the previous handful of many years. He was also a person of the founding organizers of the Orlando Indie Comedy Fest, which brought up-and-coming standups from all more than the country to Orlando and place our comedy scene on the map. Gersting was identified for his like of pinball and ’90s alt-rock, hardly ever lacking an chance to instigate a singalong with close friends and strangers or to go away his title on the higher rating board of numerous a local pinball equipment.
It’s been a 10 years, and the showcase troopers on each other Saturday night time. Celebrating its tin anniversary at 9 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, 2022, a stellar line-up is promised: the aforementioned Akeem Woods and Larry Fulford, David Jolly, Doug McPherson, Jake Ricca, Lee Cohen, Rauce Padgett, Sara Nowak, Sean Philippe and Tim “Big Tim” Murphy will all be on deck.