When stand-up comedian Joe Matarese was asked about his fondest memory of growing up in South Jersey the answer came quickly, in full detail, and without any uncertainty.
“My greatest memory was renting a one-bedroom apartment in Wildwood with three other guys after I graduated high school,” Matarese said.
“That was not only the greatest time as a young person, it was the greatest time of my life – Wildwood, 17 to 18 years old. I worked on the beach, renting chairs. I did a video about it.”
The video the comic’s referring to was a recent clip posted to his social media sites, where he detailed the summer he and his friends spent working at the Jersey shore town, overcharging unsuspecting tourists on the rental fees for chairs and umbrellas, and pocketing the difference in cash.
Warning: Joe Matarese is a stand-up comedian and he occasionally uses some “adult” language. You may hear some of that if you click any of his videos shared here.
“That one did really well,” he said of the video. “I think because it was a scam. Everything that I did that was a scam, that almost was illegal, those are the videos that do the best.”
Matarese recounted that summer even further, and it turns out his entire time in Wildwood that year started with something of a scam.
“We got lucky because my one friend’s dad owned a little motel,” Matarese said. “He gave us one of the rooms. They were like efficiencies, a one bedroom with a kitchen in it. He let us have it for the whole summer.
“It was called the San Remo. Of course – how Italian is that – that Gennaro Esposito’s dad would own the San Remo?”
But the “free” stay in the Wildwood efficiency was supposed to come with some built-in responsibilities that summer. Whether what came next was the product of a pre-planned scheme, or simply teenaged incompetence may be a matter of controversy to this very day.
“The joke was he said, ‘ you can have it if you paint the whole building for us,’” Matarese said of his friend’s father’s offer.
“We started painting it and we were so bad at it that he just stopped us.
“He said, ‘you can still have the apartment, just stop painting! You guys are ruining the building!’
“We were getting paint all over the ground. We sucked!”
What was your Jersey shore town gowing up?
Striking a local nerve
It’s personal stories like that one that Matarese has been mining for material in his stand-up career lately and the regional nostalgia has really struck a nerve with audiences.
Matarese said his comedy has always been biographical in nature, but the past few months have really taken a turn towards subjects related to South Jersey and Philadelphia.
“It kind of naturally evolved. It wasn’t like I tried to do stuff about South Jersey and Philly,” he said. “The Eagles had that run for the Superbowl and I started posting stuff about them and started getting huge views.”
How it started
Matarese grew up in Cherry Hill, graduating from Cherry Hill East in 1985, and he began pursuing a career in comedy almost immediately after.
He said he was taking classes at Camden County Community College when a friend told him about open mic shows in Philly at clubs like Comedy Works and the Comedy Factory Outlet. He noted that this was long before the internet, and until that friend told him about it, he had no idea this was an option for him.
“I didn’t know there were comedy clubs there, or I would have started even younger,” he said. “Once I found out there were two comedy clubs where you could sign your name on a list and get up, I started going and I never stopped. It was immediately like, ‘oh my God, yeah, this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’”
How it’s going
Now, nearly 40 years in, Matarese has performed all around the country and even overseas. He’s been featured on national TV shows and podcasts, and has put out multiple albums and specials.
With his latest focus on South Jersey-centric material, Matarese is calling his current run the “It’s In The Wooder Tour,” for reasons that should be obvious to anyone reading this article.
He’s performing spots this weekend, Saturday and Sunday at the Punchline comedy club in Philly, as part of that tour. Later this summer, on both June 22 and August 3, he’ll bring the show to Stone Harbor’s Harbor Square Theater for performances there.
After additional shows outside the area, in New York, New England, and further up in New Jersey, Matarese will return to South Jersey with a big show planned for the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood on December 27.
More South Jersey Please!
Matarese continues to crank out the South Jersey and Philly-based content through videos on his social media pages. He said another of his “scam” topics – his recounting of a way he found to beat the tolls on the Jersey Turnpike back in the day – was among his most popular.
Other non-scam topics recently have included Brigantine Castle, clubs Enchante and California East, and remembering the Ellisburg Circle (fondly).
The local online material has not only provided Matarese with fodder for his future stage sets, as well as increased online traffic, but he’s also acquired sponsors from the region as a result.
For instance, Vito’s Pizza in Cherry Hill, where Matarese recently filmed some of his videos, is sponsoring the Philadelphia dates at the Punchline, while the Ginger Hale Cannabis Dispensary in Oaklyn is sponsoring his show at the Scottish Rite.
What’s next?
Matarese now lives with his wife and two children in New York, just outside the city in West Chester County.
He regularly returns to South Jersey to make the videos, and he said he’s recently booked time at the NJ Content Studio in Haddonfield to film a series of discussions with his old friends and comedians. He’ll turn those talks into even more videos about local topics.
Matarese said when he comes down to South Jersey it gives him a chance to visit his family and friends. His brother, sister and parents all still live in the area, and he said he even plans to bring his dad into the studio to make some videos about eras further back in Cherry Hill and South Jersey History.
“I said (to his dad), ‘you’ve been to the Latin Casino. You saw Sinatra. You saw Don Rickles. You’ve got stories of Cherry Hill before Atlantic City,’” he said. “I mean Cherry Hill used to be a mini-Atlantic City, before Atlantic City. The racetrack, all those things that aren’t there, I can get first-hand stories about those. It seems like people are nostalgic about the area.”
When he’s not in the Philadelphia-area, Matarese said he can still make the local material play in other places around the country, and even internationally, if only by comparing how he grew up here to the way things are different wherever he may be performing.
“If I go to Denver and they don’t know about all the Italian stuff I did in South Jersey, they can still laugh,” he said.
He did say though that the laughs are deeper and more knowing when the crowd’s connection to the material is deeper.
“I do notice when there’s a stronger connection, they laugh more,” he said. “So you start to learn what to keep out and what to keep in.”
Apart from this immediate area, Matarese said there is another market where this local material plays beautifully – Florida.
“I was in Naples Florida and I pulled into the parking lot, and the car parked straight across from me had the Eagles and the Phillies on their license plate,” he said. “I thought, ‘this is going to be a good show.’”
He said he asked the crowd during the show how many of them were from Philly and South Jersey.
“It was 90 percent of the audience, and it was packed,” he said.
Matarese said his son will be starting college on Florida’s gulf coast next year, and he’s looking now into setting up a series of gigs in that area.
He’s also trying to book more locations for shows in South Jersey and he’s working at polishing the ideas he’s exploring in his videos into more fully-formed material.
“My goal is to have a lot of the material that you’re seeing – all the nostalgic things that I’m talking about on my social media posts – to have stand-up comedy versions of all these things,” he said.
Follow Matarese on Facebook and Instagram for more of his South Jersey nostalgia and check out his website for tickets to current shows, and news about dates to come.
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