Standup comic and cable TV personality Roy Wood Jr. just shared a tale of a run-in with former SF Mayor Willie Brown, and says Da Mayor waltzed into one of his shows without paying, and swiped a CD from the merchandise booth.

Stand-up comic Roy Wood Jr. is best-known for being a Daily Show correspondent from 2015 to 2023, also hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2023, and his touring schedule has brought him to esteemed SF venues like the Palace of Fine Arts. And it may have been that Palace of Fine Arts show, or perhaps a gig at Cobb’s Comedy Club, where the Chronicle reports that Wood says former SF Mayor Willie Brown crashed the show for free and pilfered a CD from the merchandise table.  

Yet Wood still concedes that Brown was “charming.”


This was all told via Twitter exchange, in which some other standup comic observes out of the blue that “Cartoon mayors used to always wear top hats and a sash.” Wood then responded with some pictures of former Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Bernard Kincaid sporting some pretty wild hats.

One follower responded to that by commenting that the fedora resembled the well-known hats worn by Willie Brown. And boy did Wood have a Willie Brown story to share.  


Wood starts the story with “Willie Brown showed up to my sold out San Francisco shows once & told the door man ‘Willie Brown on every list’ (he was NOT on my list) still they gave him a free ticket.” That would not be the end of Wood’s Willie Brown story.  

“THEN after the show, he came up to my merch table, took a CD w/o paying, then shook my hand and said ‘You just met Willie Brown, You want a picture?’” Wood continues. “Before i could answer he disappeared into the night. No date, no homeboys, no security detail. Just the mayor out by himself showing up to yo show for free and stealing yo shit. He was so charming i couldn't even be mad.🤣🤣🤣”

So there you have it, Roy Wood Jr. says Willie Brown scammed his way into the show and took a CD without paying. But Wood simply learned what we all knew from the movie The Princess Diaries, which is that “It never comes down on Willie Brown.”

Related: Hold on to Your Hat, It’s Willie Brown’s 90th Birthday Today [SFist]

Image: @Schwarzenegger via Twitter