Eugene’s Olsen Run on fast track to stand-up comedy gold

There’s stand-up, and there’s face-down.

The latter is where Joe Sinclitico found himself Dec. 30, 2023. It was opening night at his new comedy club inside the nondescript gray building that over the years has been many things — Way Shine Inn, Rock’n Rodeo, Hi-Fi Music Hall, Sessions Music Hall — at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street.

“Maybe the worst bomb of my life,” said the 46-year-old, who’s been doing stand-up comedy since he was 16, growing up in San Diego. 

“And I get off stage, and the next comedian goes up, and he bombs. And I came (backstage) here, and I laid down on my face, and I thought, ‘Oh, my god, I opened the worst comedy club in the world, and I had this panic attack.

“This is going to be terrible,” he thought. “This is so bad.”

And now — 16 months later?

Now, T.J. Miller is on stage and messing with those brave enough to sit right up front, particularly Springfield’s Nate Foster, on the first Friday night in April at the Olsen Run Comedy Club and Lounge.

“Man, look at you,” Miller says, looking down at Foster and diverting from a bit about a friend with whom he plays squash.

“Guy in the front row,” he says, looking out at the rest of the audience. “He’s just lookin’ at me. Like this. I’m gonna show you, ready?”

Now Miller imitates Foster’s face. It’s not flattering, but the crowd roars with delight. 

You take your chances when you sit smack-dab in the middle at the foot of the stage, a Valentine’s Day gift from Foster’s partner, Jill Lee, who accompanied him in the comedic firing line.

“It was awesome,” Foster said after that Friday night show, standing in line with Lee backstage to meet Miller and have their photo taken with the comic who’s perhaps best known for TV shows like “Silicon Valley” and the “Deadpool” superhero films.

Miller, 43, did five sold-out shows over three nights the first weekend in April at the club, where the big names just keep stacking up at what might very well be the only full-time comedy club ever in Eugene-Springfield.

Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Melissa Villasenor did five shows at the club in February, and check out these A-list names, all coming in August: Patton Oswalt (Aug. 8-9), Tiffany Haddish (Aug. 15-16), Janeane Garofalo (Aug. 18-19) and Kevin Nealon (Aug. 21-23).

“Sometimes I look at a club and the list (on their website), and I’m like, ‘Yeah, whatever,” comedian and actor Christopher Titus said before taking the stage March 28 at Olsen Run. “Then I looked at the list of this club, and I was like, ‘I’m proud to be on that list.’”

“He sort of struck gold, and I think this place is going to do really well,” said Miller, sitting in the club’s green room in between his two shows April 4. “This is a place that probably needed a comedy club, because the town is big enough to kind of warrant that.”

Sinclitico, who lives in Salem and routinely flies to Los Angeles to perform stand-up and make connections in the business, quickly built a club that now rivals Helium, Portland’s top comedy club. 

‘A natural transition’

Sinclitico started the club with his wife, Rachel Olsen Sinclitico, a former aspiring model and actress in Los Angeles, who grew up in Salem, and Rachel’s father, Jamie Olsen. The club’s name comes from the family’s first business, Olsen Run Winery in Harrisburg, which they closed in February after almost five years of operation. They wanted to focus full time on the Eugene club.

“I think it was a natural transition,” Sinclitico said. “We took what we learned from that and we’re applying it to this.”

The Olsens opened a food truck in 2020, after Joe and Rachel left Los Angeles to seek refuge during the COVID pandemic. It was stationed at an empty gas station site on Diamond Hill Road, right at the Exit 209 turnoff from Interstate 5 to Harrisburg. Jamie Olsen, who owns property in the Coburg Hills, saw the site while driving by one day and thought it might make a good spot for a wine tasting room, Sinclitico said.

The food truck started selling hard-to-get-your-mouth-around cheeseburgers and thick milkshakes, and then came the wines made elsewhere and labeled “Olsen Run Winery.” They even installed eight Tesla Superchargers to bring in more business.

One day, Jamie Olsen said there was a guy across the street, Isaac Barrager, a mechanic at Sherman Brothers Trucking, who plays country music and wanted to do a show at their place.

“And maybe 80 people showed up,” Sinclitico said. “And I was like, ‘That’s crazy. If I tried to do this in L.A., zero people would show up, right? Because there’s so much to do in the city.”

Then Olsen recommended doing a comedy show, given his son-in-law’s background, both in performing and staging shows in L.A. 

Sinclitico was skeptical, but they did it, inviting local comedians — “And boom! We had a bunch of people show up,” he said of that May 2021 show.

The shows continued, here and there during the next three years, booking comedians including Jeff Richards, also a former SNL cast member (think “Drunk Girl” on “Weekend Update,” circa 2003).

By now, Sinclitico and the rest of the Olsen family were thinking of something more — a full-time comedy club that could regularly land A-list comics.

This wasn’t his original dream, though. He remembers his older sister showing him Eddie Murphy’s stand-up special “Delirious” on HBO when he was 5 years old. 

For his 16^th birthday, Sinclitico took the family car and drove to the Comedy Store in La Jolla, California, for Open Mic Night.

“It was great,” he recalled. Afterward, the “door guy” told him, “Hey, kid, you got a lot of potential.” 

The door guy was a young Bobby Lee, who would go on to have a prominent career as an actor and comedian.

Sinclitico has appeared in TV commercials and a couple of low-budget films, as well as “Adam Devine’s House Party” on Comedy Central. He’s also performed at Los Angeles’ three big clubs, The Comedy Store, the Laugh Factory and The Improv. 

He loves performing stand-up, but doesn’t do it for money because there is no money. Not unless you’re a big name like T.J. Miller or a Tiffany Haddish.

“You hit a point where you’ve got to pay the bills, and opportunity presents itself,” Sinclitico said.

The building at 44 E. Seventh Ave. in Eugene was the opportunity he and the Olsens were searching for. 

They’d looked at the old Greyhound bus station at East 10^th Avenue and Pearl Street, thinking it might be a cool space but concluded it would take too much work and money to make it show-ready.

The building at Seventh and Willamette had sat empty for about a year, since Sessions Music Hall closed its doors in the fall of 2022.

But Sinclitico and the Olsens made a deal to lease the building in late 2023, and then came that fateful night before New Year’s Eve.

Sinclitico picked himself up off the ground — literally — and, as they say, the show went on.

Launching the club

They booked Richards for Jan. 12-13 in early 2024, but then came that nasty ice storm that was arguably the worst in Lane County history; inch-thick ice coated much of the valley.

“I think we were the only place that stayed open,” said Sinclitico, cradling a small vape pipe in his hand as he talked.

They offered refunds to those who’d bought tickets, but most deferred their tickets for another show. And there were those who braved the ice and showed up anyway.

“Dude, people showed up,” Sinclitico said.

The place might have only been a quarter full but, “we did the show, and people loved it,” Sinclitico said. “And ever since then the shows have been insane.”

Soon came nationally known comics like Pete Holmes, Adam Ray, Chaunte Wayans (Damon Wayans Sr.’s niece) and Eddie Pepitone, who in 2002, The New York Times called “an overlooked master of the form.”

Sinclitico still performs on occasion, as he did last week when Miller was in town, but mostly he focuses on improving the club and getting the best talent he can.

“Obviously, there was a need, and I happened to be uniquely qualified to fill that need and, it was just, whatever the saying is, opportunity is just luck and preparation,” Sinclitico said. “I was just the right guy at the right time in the right place.”

He and Rachel — who met in Los Angeles in 2015, married in 2022 and now have a baby girl, Sloane, who’s almost 2 — make a good team, Sinclitico said. She watched him book shows early on “and she caught the vibe,” he said. 

“We do it together, but she is doing most of it, and she’s amazing at it.”

Upon entering the club, which opens 90 minutes before the early show, club-goers get seated by the affable Jamie Olsen while Rachel manages the top-notch service.

“I like how big it is, and the service is good,” said Miranda Rommel, who came all the way from Kings Valley, northwest of Corvallis, with her husband, Andy Rommel, to see Miller for their second show at the club.

‘This guy in Eugene, Oregon’

His appearance in Eugene earlier this month was Miller’s first-ever visit to Eugene. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, sipping on some Blanton’s Whiskey, neat, in the green room after posing for photos with audience members following the 7 p.m. show.

“My agent came to me and said, ‘There’s this guy in Eugene, Oregon, and he’s booking pretty big acts, and he’s got this comedy club,’ and I think he had said we had somebody who went there and they really liked it,” Miller said.

“I just like going places where I’ve never been. I don’t really like Portland. I haven’t performed there in a long time.”

Miller’s not a big fan of Seattle audiences, either, but loves Spokane and Tacoma, so why not check out Eugene?

The early show audience April 4 was clearly thrilled that “Weasel” from the “Deadpool” films was in town.

The 6-foot-3 Miller followed Sinclitico, who followed Eugene comedian Seth Milstein, and riffed on our fair city for a good while, starting with how he hadn’t found anyone who could explain the place to him.

 … not a college town people think it’s a college own but the university’s really important we’re not like a big city like Portland but we’re still Oregon you know what I mean we’re like Colorado kinda but not really like we’re not Denver we’re smaller than Denver we’re bigger than Boulder so we would you know I don’t know I don’t know what the f— to say I’ve had no idea for 30 years I recently moved here I don’t know what this place is about …

He had the audience from the get-go — the laughter filling the room and bouncing off the burgundy colored walls.

Some comics prefer the intimacy of a comedy club, folks relaxing at tables, sipping on cocktails and eating dinner, versus a larger theater setting such as the McDonald Theatre or the Hult Center.

Olsen Run is one of the smaller clubs where Miller has performed. 

“But it’s better for me,” he said. “My favorite comedy club seats, like, 175 in Appleton, Wisconsin, and 200 seats is the San Diego club that I love.”

Milstein, the Eugene comic, often warms up the Olsen Run audiences with his deadpan observations. He’s been putting on open-mic shows around town for years and has been somewhat taken aback by it all.

“I’m so impressed that they’ve been able to do this on a pretty weekly basis,” he said before hitting the stage to open Miller’s second show April 4. “I think it’s really great for the comedy scene, because the locals kind of have this brass ring that they can reach for.”

Sinclitico and the Olsens have big plans for the club, hoping to make it one of the best-known comedy clubs in the nation.

“I think it can be,” he said. “I think it already is? Look at our calendar. I mean, you can compare it to any club in the country. It’s pretty fire.”

If you go

“Dueling Pianos: British Invasion”
Two piano-playing comics sing songs from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Elton John, The Who, and David Bowie while encouraging the audience to sing and dance and make requests during this head-to-head rock ‘n’ roll showdown.
When: 6:30 p.m., April 25; 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., April 26.
Tickets: $25 at olsenrun.com

Comedian Amir K
When: 9:30 p.m., April 30 (two other shows are sold out)
Tickets: $25 at olsenrun.com

Where: Olsen Run Comedy Club and Lounge, 44 E. Seventh Ave., Eugene