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He accepts the things he cannot change, and if he can’t change what he can’t accept, then self-described “cheerful pessimist” David Tveite is at least going to joke about it.
Tveite’s sense of humor is dark but clean, resulting in what he calls “doom lite.” The Minnesota-born comedian, who can most often be found performing at Helium Comedy Club or Al’s Den, doesn’t do gallows humor, nor does his level of self-deprecation warrant a wellness check. Instead, Tveite’s efforts to make light of hard times inject a feeling of lightness in the air. It might be rough out there for people looking to make new connections, but have they ever been lonely enough to endure Phish phandom? That particular joke rips more on Tveite than on psychedelic music fans, a twist that leaves room for fans to get in on the joke.
“What I’m going for is cheerful nihilism,” Tveite tells WW. “I’m kind of existential, I’m kind of brainy, but I make dumb jokes…I yell a lot. People think I’m angrier than I am.”
Just like the Mall of America, Tveite, 37, hails from Bloomington, Minn. He got into comedy while attending the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. His first open mic was in 2010 at the defunct People’s Republic of Koffee in Seattle. Tveite initially attended open mics for his poetry but was inspired to get into comedy after watching that night’s standup comedians.
“The comedians on it stank,” Tveite says. “I was like, I can definitely do better than them.”
From there, Tveite went to Washington, D.C., where he embedded in the nation’s capital’s comedy scene, where he would eventually gain attention from The Washington Post.
“It was a cool place to do standup because the driving culture was very boring,” Tveite says, clarifying that he means no disrespect to the local artistic community of the nation’s capital. “More and more of the city proper, especially northwest D.C., where I lived, is very boat shoe-y.”
In 2015, Tveite appeared briefly on the final season of Last Comic Standing. After living in D.C. for four years, he completed six years in New York City, where he stuck with telling jokes.
“New York was an extremely hard place to do comedy, and it was not fun for me there,” Tveite says. “But D.C. had some really great comedy rooms, though it’s turned over since I’ve been there. Seattle, there were things that I really liked about living there and doing comedy, but I think a lot of that had to do with being 22.”
By the time Tveite was ready to leave New York, he says he had his pick of where to go. Tveite had enjoyed performing at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival in 2016 (“Portland is great! I drink for free there!”) and ultimately loves the Pacific Northwest, which prompted him to move to Portland in 2022. Tveite enjoys the Rose City—particularly going to Revolution Hall and watching men his age at shows get balder and balder—and says he is “thrilled to bits” that his peers voted him among Portland’s funniest people. His influences include Patton Oswalt, Conan O’Brien and Tig Notaro, along with TV programs like The Simpsons and Mr. Show.
“I think Portland takes comedy really seriously as an art form in a way that a lot of places that I’ve been in and done comedy don’t,” he says. “I used to go on dates with women who would ask about my favorite comics, and I’d say Kyle Kinane, Maria Bamford, and they wouldn’t know who any of these people are who are household names to comedians, but people here do seem to appreciate it and respect it more, and I think Portland has something really special in terms of what they bring as an audience.”
“I just really love the Pacific Northwest in general,” he continues. “You feel very close to nature out here, and if you’re not careful it will come back and consume all that you have. The air is really nice.”
What’s the funniest thing David Tveite has seen in Portland? Being a murder victim. “About two months after I moved here, I was riding my bicycle up Northeast 7th and a fucking crow flew into my head. I didn’t see it until the last second; it felt just like someone pulling back and slapping me hard, open-handed in the side of the face. I know that crows can remember faces, so I’ve been going out of my way to be friendly when I see them around just in case the one who hit me has been talking shit. But let’s be honest, he should have been watching where he was going. I think I’ve normalized relations with the birds since then; I always say hi to them on the street, and it seems like we’re cool now.”