Room 808 exists because Martin Amini never got back on the plane. Born and raised in Silver Spring, doing stand-up in D.C. since 2012, he had moved to Los Angeles for a residency at the Comedy Store. “When Covid hit in March 2020, I was in D.C. doing a show and I never got back on the plane to L.A.,” he told District Fray in 2021.
While the clubs were dark, he ran pop-up shows in his dad’s backyard in Gaithersburg and taught a comedy class. In March 2021 he found a room of his own: an 800-square-foot former flower shop at 808 Upshur Street NW, in Petworth. The first shows ran that June. “I took it upon myself to create an intimate space where the comedy scene can come to work out their jokes,” he said that fall. His class became the Wednesday showcase, musician friends joined in for comedy-and-jazz nights, and work by local artist dieGLO went up on the walls.
Five years on, it is still comedian-run and still BYOB: about fifty seats, comedians from Comedy Central, HBO and Netflix six nights a week, free local showcases Monday to Thursday and headliners on Friday and Saturday. “It’s a smaller venue that can bring comedians and the community of Petworth together,” Amini told DCist that first fall. That is still the idea.
