I’m from a super-suburban Northern California city called “Fremont,” where our district boasts high proportions of Asian American representation and my high school alma mater consistently ranks within the nation’s top 50. MC Hammer used to live there. And… That’s about it. Unless you actually care about Deion Sanders. (He used to live there, too.)

Long story short, Fremont is a very residential and safe big town. The layman’s history is this: Fremont is five townships put into one. And Fremont actually surrounds another city called Newark. A friend of mine once described it as “It’s like a turtle humping a grape.” There is no downtown. There is no “scene.” People who ask me if I want to party in Fremont are never from the city, and I always adamantly refuse after initially asking “You’re partying in Fremont?” (There is an allegedly entertaining country bar. Haven’t been.) It’s a horrible place to grow up if you’re a teenager. Some of us come out okay, though, I think.

A guy I went to high school with has been cutting his teeth in the Bay Area standup scene for about a year. You wouldn’t know it when you meet him or see him on stage, but he’s a super intelligent scholar. Went to Berkeley and absorbed math effortlessly and all that. He just doesn’t wear his uncanny alacrity with numbers on his sleeve like most socially maladjusted mathematic geniuses.

Sammy Obeid was always hilarious, and now he has a chance to open the show for Wild 94.9′s Comedy Jam. I’ve seen Sammy perform live, but not the other two comedians he’s up against. What’s really interesting, though, is that Sammy – A “Middle Eastern” American – is competing against one Pilipino (Niko Santos) and one Indian (Hasan Minhaj) for the coveted spot. (See their videos after the cut.) All in all, I love how their stuff speaks directly to the “millennial” generation that grew up in the Bay. Their bits are often colored (Heh.) by their experiences growing up in multicultural communities, and of course, they’ve probably each got a perfectly accented impression of their immigrant parents for whenever the audience is ready.

Check out the videos on 94.9′s webpage, and vote for whoever cracks you up. Of course for me, Sammy’s set hits home the most. Here’s Sammy:

FREMONT, REPRESENT!

Editor’s Note: Despite what you may have heard, nobody calls it “Freakmont.”

Niko Santos

Hasan Manhaj