the very funny, the very insightful and very revolutionary.

Stephanie Gibney say what drew me over to comedy after after being in poetry was, you know, I grew up loving stand up comedy, and my mom and I used to watch In Living Color or Saturday Night Live, a lot of Seinfeld.

I grew up loving it, always wanting to do it.

And then, you know, Ramona and I have been friends since high school.

He he got into comedy like straight out of college after a few years, and he'd been doing it for some time, putting on shows.

I've always, you know, gone to his shows, tried to see like live comedy when I could.

And yeah, just he started running these Friday shows and I was at the first one just kind of watching.

And I was like, I think I'm ready.

How I'm doing tonight.

Oh, he Oh, okay.

That was a good one.

That was a good one.

I was surprised.

I was surprised because, like, judging by the weather today, I was like, ooh, everybody's going to be in their cozy.

But yeah, you know, real cozy.

It is.

I definitely feel like my cultural heritage does play a big part in in my art just because of the environment I grew up in and grew in in a predominantly Puerto Rican sort of like community area of the city with a very rich history.

I grew up with my mom's side of the family, so all my friends were like Puerto Rican.

Everybody around us was so very much like influenced who I became, how I sort of relate to the world, my experiences, all of my stories growing up.

It does play a part and it just feels exciting.

I feel like the community I'm a part of is very supportive of one another.

If someone has an idea for a script or a joke or a sketch they want to do, it's like they can bring it to the group and we'll all kind of like take our expertise and lend it to the project.

So it just feels like very supportive and very, very creative.

Like it's like teeming with inspiration and creativity right now.

So yeah, I remember my kids grandparents, his granddad was like, Why did you give them these toys?

It was like Princess Peach.

I was like, Because he is Mario, He won't play Mario.

All the characters will leave out the girls.

What kind of sick world is this?

It's crazy, Dora.

I was like, Think we agree.

But meanwhile he had a ponytail down to here wearing silk shirts.

Weirdly enough, I feel like because there's such a push now for, like, diversity in comedy, in lineups, in, you know, kind of everything we do, we've been really as a society, like, pushed to be like, there's a bunch of white guys on this lineup.

Why is that?

I don't really think too much about it or see it as like a hindrance.

I see it as like a really great perspective that I have that not a lot of people have because of like my background, my experience, Nobody else is going to be able to like, talk about what I'm talking about.

So I don't really mold my set too much to the audience reaction.

Obviously, the goal is to get them to laugh right or to at least feel something.

Comedy has kind of gone beyond like just the laughs.

It's like, What can we get you to feel through the gamut of, like, emotions?

And so I'd like to be doing comedy more, but, you know, I'm a poet at heart, so.

Fine Avenue was first known as Puerto Rican Boulevard.

We all got here by the bootstraps Operation Bootstrap, an illustrious, industrious turn means robbery.

Means we rename parts of this hood to remind us of another hood.

Fast forward to now, and I'll tell you how we have more dollar stores than schools.

My poetry career is probably a little bit different than the traditional, I guess, way of going about it and way of finding success.

You know, I didn't get my degree.

I didn't get an MFA.

I started writing my book without any degrees.

I only recently got my associates during the pandemic.

But I actually do love shopping.

If you can't tell, I love shopping for things you cannot wear to work events and weddings and that people die, then yeah, I have a lot of my debt.

Grandfather's club is.

Those are some of my favorite articles that helped me grow a lot.

I mean, the arts is kind of where I found my voice.

A lot of my confidence, a lot of my just sense of self and being able to like, know I could accomplish something and I found a lot of my community there.

You know, the friends that I have are because of the arts, except for like, you know, my core childhood friends.

But any friend I'm in adulthood now has been because of my involvement in the arts, the community.

I feel there's a big communal aspect to the Cleveland comedy scene.

It's like if you go to the open mics, you all see each other.

There's a few, you know, monthly shows, weekly shows, and if you're out here going to the open mics and, and, you know, doing well and like people can see you working and and taking it seriously, then you know there is a big Yeah, there's like a very big communal aspect I think and like you know, the little things that I'll be like, oh I'll come to the mall.

You could be a model mom, like mama, mama.

And then she yelled at me one day because I was outside playing.

I got all these scars on my knees and she was like, You're never going to be a model now.

And I was like, That's what was stopping me.

Like, you know, my kids are both sort of artists themselves.

My oldest, you know, wants to get into animation and digital art.

He's also a writer and I think that I would love to give them the opportunity to to like, go out into the world and have a sort of network, you know.