Bob Ayres

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Bob Ayres (b. December 27, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and impresario, the founder and owner of The Other Café, a landmark comedy club and fixture of the San Francisco stand-up comedy scene in the 1980’and 90’s.

The San Francisco Bay area contributed substantially to American cultural movements of the post-war era as a host climate for the emergence of the Beat Generation of the 1950s, the hippie/ counterculture movements of the 1960s, the spiritual/ self-realization movements of the 1970s, and the stand-up comedy and comedy-club explosion of the 1980s.

Through the The Other Café, Ayres was instrumental in popularizing stand-up comedy nationally, as well as recognizing and supporting the talents of many performers, among them, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Ellen Degeneres and Dana Carvey. In 1981, his personal management business negotiated a development contract for Dana Carvey with NBC, the springboard for his role on “Saturday Night Live.” In 1983-84, Ayres executive-produced eight episodes of a cable TV series, “The Other Cafe’s Comedy Showcase” starring Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Ellen DeGeneres, Carol Leifer, Kevin Pollak, Geoff Bolt and Will Durst, which won gold, silver, and bronze medals at the International Film and Television Festival of New York.

In 1987, Ayres executive-produced a television pilot called “Two Guys with Amusing Shorts,” which introduced short films by a variety of comedians and directors, including Academy Award winner Bill Couturie. He produced the four-year series "Eve of Jewish Humor," presented at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California.

Robert Ayres served as a member of the Board of Advisors for the TED conference[1] in Monterey, California until 2007 and was the inaugural Director of the TED Prize[2], first presented in 2004 and now given annually in support of the global efforts of such honorees as Bono, E.O. Wilson, Dave Eggers and former President Bill Clinton.

Ayres is the current Executive Producer of The Next Twenty Years series[3], a San Francisco-based series of lectures, symposia, industry gatherings and salons that he founded in 1996, devoted to the examination of industry trends and the exchange of ideas that will form and influence future decades. The Next Twenty Years series has been presented in Austin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. He also served for three years on the Board of Directors of the community-based, listener-supported radio station KVMR-FM in Nevada City, California, named community radio station of the year for two of those three years.