A Funny Story About the Conshohocken Café

Inasmuch as a person can seem like a comedian, Sidney Gantt does.

For instance: if a reporter and his girlfriend were to get coffee at the Conshohocken Café the morning of Feb. 20 and Gantt were to be their server—and bear in mind here, the fact that Gantt would later that afternoon be interviewed by the reporter for a story on a local comedian who hosts a monthly comedy show at the Café, and that Gantt was that comedian, was one all parties were still ignorant of—the girlfriend might say afterwards, as they walked to the car, “is it just me, or was he funny? I liked him.”

This isn’t to say Gantt is aggressively witty, or seems quietly desperate for approval. He isn’t and doesn’t. He's calm, and even, and projects an attitude of being more or less okay with everything that's going on. But funny. His overall effect, with respect to his being funny while not trying to be funny, is best captured by a passage a now-deceased novelist tapped out about the experience of watching promising young tennis players warm-up: "[they moved] with the compact nonchalance I've since come to recognize in pros when they're working out: the suggestion is one of a very powerful engine in low gear."

All of which is to say, Sidney Gantt does seem really funny.

I wish I’d tipped him better.

“I talk about being a human who’s not ashamed of being a human. If you can imagine a human who indulged all of their impulses, but wasn’t a full-on anarchist, that’s who I am as a comic,” Gantt, 31 and sans apron, told Patch the afternoon of Feb. 20, before apologizing for explaining it clumsily and trying again. “My act is about what it is to be an idiot, which is to me synonymous with being a human.”

With a head of hair that, if slightly bushier, would be the first thing you mentioned when you described him to people, Gantt has been performing comedy for seven years, six for a pay check, and hosting the Captain Action Comedy Show at the Conshohocken Café since November.

(He’s worked there as a server as well for the last couple months, picking up an occasional shift when he’s not on the road.)

The Pottstown High School graduate who came to comedy by way of Lafayette College (where he didn’t go to class but nevertheless left with a degree in economics) writes, performs in, and organizes the show—the latter with the aid of his rolodex of local comics.

“We have a range of voices in the show,” he says. “Some guys do one-liners. Some talk about dating. Some do stuff that’s a little bit darker.”

Each show consists of three acts—usually a rookie comic, a sketch group, and a headliner—and opens with a set by Gantt. Between acts, the host does segments of what he calls the ‘Captain Action Comedy Quiz Show’—an audience participation exercise where he makes a series of absurd statements about the performers and invites the crowd to guess which are true.

“The quiz is one of the really unique aspects of the show,” he says.

The same could probably be said for the host.

Conshohocken Café hosts the Captain Action Comedy Night the last Monday of every month. Tickets cost $20, and include dinner and a complimentary cocktail. The next show is Feb. 29 at 8 p.m.