The ThunderBlogs

The lights dimmed, and darkness enveloped the corners of the pub. Then suddenly, a brilliant spotlight illuminated a corner, making the single stool and microphone that stood on the small stage glint in its harsh glare.

Chatter faded as a man with scruffy black hair and a matching beard took to the small raised platform. He was clad in a dark-blue button-down shirt with patches of a light-blue pattern, which, from afar, resembled the effect of tie-dye.

His dark eyes scanned the audience as he began to speak, introducing the audience gathered in Darby’s Neighbourhood Pub to the weekly stand-up comedy night they had either come to see, or were unwittingly present for.

An unusually busy night, the laughs started on time Tues. Sept. 14, instead of hanging back, waiting for an audience large enough to preclude crickets.

A long succession of comedians ranging from locals to a Much Music star followed. Then the dark-haired man returned.

Sandwiched between a chubby redheaded comedian making jokes about her love life, and a headliner that pulled a joke a second in rants that ran into one another with barely a breath between them, Patrick Maliha spent the majority of his act making fun of a University of British Columbia masters student.

That’s because comedy night organizer Maliha, is a roast comedian. Every time he gets on stage, he singles out a member of the audience, and pokes fun at them.

According to him, people love it. They keep coming back week after week, because, as he’s been told by audience members on numerous occasions, no two shows are the same.

An Ontario native, Maliha got into the laugh business around the time he moved to Kitsilano – 16 years ago.

He said he remembers a Kits before parking meters and Lululemon, though through all the changes he’s seen in the neighbourhood, Maliha said Darby’s has remained the same. A community institution, the pub is undergoing its first renovations in 25-some-odd years.

Maliha said he loves it there because of the crowd: an unlikely mix of students, retirees and everyone in between. He said there’s one pair of 80 year olds that have been to 18 of the last 20 weeks of comedy nights.

Maliha can be found nearly every Tuesday, from 9:30 p.m. on, at Darby’s Neighbourhood Pub on Fourth and MacDonald, in the heart, and the funny-bone, of Kitsilano.