Comedian and Mill Valley resident Mark Pitta is a
familiar face.
If you didn't catch him when he was a regular for
five years on KTVU's morning news as the "Man
on the Street" reporter, you may have seen him
on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or later
with Jay Leno. Or perhaps it was on TV's Mad
About You or when he hosted NBC's Friday Night
Videos... Lately he's been packing them in every
Tuesday at Mill Valley's Throckmorton Theater
with his fabulous "Mark Pitta & Friends" comedy
show.
But then again, maybe you caught Pitta during
the early 80's...when he was just hanging out in
Mill Valley eating soup.
SOUP???
"Back in the early '80's, right near the Vogue
Cleaners and around the corner from Safeway
there was this great soup place with homemade
soups," remembers Pitta, who was just beginning
his career as a stand-up comedian at the time.
"It wasn't like (today's) Whole Foods where you have
to sit right next to where everybody is checking out
their groceries at the registers," he says. He
remembers the restaurant was called La Petit. and "It
had like 10 soups, all very healthy. If you were sick
or cold and you just wanted to sit and have some
soup, that's where you'd go. Sure, everybody had
soup on their menus but this was THE Soup Place!"
Pitta has other fond memories of Mill Valley. He once happened upon rock
star Grace Slick in line at Safeway in Strawberry as she was buying Diet
Root Beer. "I didn’t know her," he says, "but I said, 'Diet Root Beer,
Grace?' and she said, 'The other stuff tastes like battery acid' and I said,
'Speaking of acid...'" He laughs, enjoying his memory of poking a little fun at
the 60's psychedelic icon.
In the early 80's, Pitta remembers playing at New George's in San Rafael
and The Flat Iron although there weren't a lot of places in Marin for stand-
ups.
While Marin has grown and changed a bit since Pitta's early days in the 80's
as a struggling comic in Mill Valley, he believes "it's still a place where you
can walk down the street and say 'hi' to a stranger and they'll still say hi
back."
Or maybe join you for a bowl of soup, for old times sake.
