The Laugh Factory in downtown San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter brings the national comedy franchise — founded on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard in 1979 — to the basement level of the Keating Hotel on F Street. San Diego's outpost launched in February 2020 as one of seven Laugh Factory locations, adding a headliner-caliber room to a Gaslamp comedy corridor that already includes American Comedy Co. San Diego. The intimate subterranean layout features tiered seating, a mezzanine balcony, and close-proximity sight lines engineered to amplify the connection between comedian and audience. Headliner showcases run Thursday through Sunday, mixing nationally touring acts with unannounced celebrity sets — a format the brand has refined across more than four decades in the stand-up industry. Local comics rotate through the Gaslamp's dedicated stand-up rooms, with the Laugh Factory's weekend lineups often sharing performers with Mad House Comedy Club a few blocks north on Fourth Avenue. Multi-night residency bookings — where a single headliner performs four or more ticketed sets across a weekend run — represent the venue's highest-capacity programming.