Glenda and I just ran into Dave Chapelle in the new mall on Market Street in San Francisco. That’s pretty neat in and of itself, as he’s a funny dude, but what struck me more was how darn polite he was.
We got to the escalator at the same time and we stopped to let him on but he insisted we go first even though his friend was already ahead of us. Once we were on the escalator we realized who he was, confirmed by someone on the opposite escalator saying his name in surprise. I dorked out and snapped a quick photo with my Blackberry. As we started to walk away he called out and I turned around and tried to figure out why in the world Chappelle would be calling us, it turns out Glenda had dropped her parking ticket and he picked it up and gave it to her.
So not only was he polite and unassumming, he saved us $30. Someone’s mother raised him right. I don’t know what he was doing hanging out in a mall in San Francisco with a skateboard, but I sure hope he had a nice night too.
That was nice of him to give you the ticket.
Oh, this will probably sound bad, but who is Dave Chappelle?
That’s pretty cool. It’s good to know that some celebrities are human, too 😛
Neat story. It conveys a sense of noblesse oblige.
sweet stuff.
Dave Chappelle show’s the bomb.
Too bad i live in Malaysia and the only i get to watch is online TV with bad lag 🙁
I also didn’t know who Dave Chappelle was, but alas Wikipedia saved the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Chappelle
It is nice to see celebrities hanging out without 3 million body guards to boost their ego’s
nice story 🙂 makes you dream of a better world in which even the rich and famous care for the “normal” people :/
I’m glad you didn’t say,”I’m Rick James Bitch!” He hates that. Great story.
He was probably doing research for a follow-up to his reimagining the Internet as a shopping mall:
http://www.buzzhumor.com/videos/4123/Chappelle
Heh.
re: ‘snapped a quick photo’
I may have done the same thing prior to reading the “talk to celebs without annoying them” how-to
http://www.wikihow.com/Talk-to-Celebrities-Without-Annoying-Them
Fortunately, I’m ready in case any celebrities pass through east central IL… (extended period of silence)…
You keep running into cool people!
Why did you take a photo of him? Are you that starry eyed? Just let him alone and live his life man!
Wanna know who Dave Chappelle is? Watch “Nutty Professor” Part 1. He is the comedian taking on “Professor Klump” in the movie. 🙂
I like his act. He is good at comedy.
Too cool! My only celebrity siting was when I saw Aaron Neville and his band waiting for their luggage in the New Orleans airport. Sigh … it’s no Dave Chappelle though.
That’s a very impressive quality shot from a phone, even a blackberry Matt. I probably would have looked at him, snapped the picture, and yelled “Run bitch! It’s Dave Chapelle!” and jumped into the escalator going in the opposite direction. But that’s just me and I’m crazy like that.
hye, i’m from malaysia too, like danny. i like Dave’s show. i still remember my first “introduction” to Dave’s show, which is a short clip, about Dave make some parody on Grand Theft Auto 3. it was very hilarious. i like it so much… he’s a great comedian and person… 😀
Cool beans. I hadn’t heard too much of him since his “break down.” But I’m glad to see it was more because of his personality conflicting with what they wanted from his show. ie. they wanted his show to be meaner.
Lucky lucky man. I’m a huge Chappelle fan.
Yeah in hindsight I feel pretty bad about taking a picture of him, bad form. If I knew a good way to contact him I’d drop him a link to this and apologize for dorking out and taking a photo. I’m not a rabid fanboy, I’m just a blogger! (Wait…)
Maybe he is a blogger as well! Did he know who “you” are? 😉
He actually lives close to me (Yellow Springs, OH).
It would have been so awesome if Chappelle went:
“Hey aren’t you Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress? I used blogger for awhile, but what you’ve done is much better.”
🙂
Well I’ll be damned…..small world, huh? That’s pretty cool!
He could really use a blog, it seems like there is a lot of misinformation about him in the media and it’d be powerful way for him to tell his own story.
No offense man, but he just showed basic manners. He waved you ahead and handed you a dropped item. The entire event had to take a matter of seconds.
Does everybody he meets in a day have this same sort of reaction to every brief encounter? I can see why stars become jerks fairly quickly.
I know you weren’t there, but he was unusually nice and I noticed it even before I realized who he was.
he’s achoo in “robin hood: men in tights.” i LOVE that movie.
he seems like a nice guy from your story 🙂 i’m so jealous that you got to meet him.
Matt’s right, Dave is one of those people that even for a normal non-celeb, is really very nice. He’s a rare exception to the norm, and has his head on quite straight, despite being a comedian with a very screwed up sense of humor.
All of which is why I like him so much.
And that pic is priceless Matt, good one. 😀
Why did you take a photo of him? Are you that starry eyed? Just let him alone and live his life man!
He’s from around here* (among other places). Although i’ve never met him myself, a few of my pals have and say he’s a real down-to-earth feller… just a very, very, abnormally funny one.
*Yellow Springs; i’m in nearby Dayton, OH
Gotta love people raised with Midwestern values. 🙂
Maybe folks are just more polite in the Midwest. 😉
Gotta admit that I was surprised he didn’t have any people either.
We saw Dave Chappelle on April 4, 2007, at the Punchline Comedy Club in San Francisco. We had tickets for the midnight show, but since his first show (which was at 10 pm) ran long, he didn’t start until about 1:45 am. We thought that he’d be tired and do a short set, but he was hilarious and did about a 2 hour show. I’ve been to comedy shows before, but that was definitely the best. We were lucky enough to get a photo with him after the show too. He’s definitely a class act and one of my favorite comedians.
Nicely done!
I live in Iowa so there are NO celebrities here 🙂 , from time to time friends from cali say they saw that one saw this one, no wonder your blogs and webpages get more hits 🙂 especially if you are some gossip site.
Anyways adore the work from wordpress tho.
Not all celebs are like JeLo (or how ever you spell it 😀 ) Dave Chappelle is one of the normal celebs
Cool story
F
dave is a regular at the cafei worked at this past summer, and he is truly a standup guy. i am not the least surprised that he would bend over to pick up a parking ticket and go out of his way to deliver it to the person who lost it, despite having been caught on camera. i’ve seldom, in a life in dealing with hundreds of people a day, met anyone as naturally gracious as he seems to be. what’s funny is that i have never seen his show, so i can’t speak to his ability as a comedian. all i can say is that i wish and hope that all people who hit the big time could be as nice and down to earth as dave. ps: plan on netflixing dave chapelle to figure out what i am missing out on by being so out of the loop media-wise!
Dave Chapelle is one of the nicest blokes about, and shame on you for not knowing who he is. If anybody has the stones to rise to the challenge, get the DVD ‘Dave Chappelle’s block party’, where DC arranges a free gig in NY, featuring Kanye West, Erykah Badu, The Roots, et al.
Not only does he demonstrate the remarkable niceness that the blogger refers to, he also shows that he is inclusive of people and not just a ‘black’ comedian. And his comedy is sharp as a tack.
In closing, people should really dig a little deeper – DC’s ‘breakdown’, was a testament to his refusal to tow the line, be pigeonholed, take the fast buck, or be any of those easy, selfish and negative things that people turn too, so very readily.