It’s Been A Lady Fest Summer For The Comedian Who Has Been Criss-Crossing The US Entertaining The Girls At One Women’s Weekend After Another
Comedian Julie Goldman is coming to women across the US live. All summer long she’s been making women laugh at the plethora of women’s weekends that have sprung up alongside longstanding favorite women’s summer getaways.
If you haven’t gotten a chance to see Julie this summer, it’s not too late! Julie loves the summers with all of the women’s weekends that get kicked off by The Dinah in Palm Springs, California and flow through the US, Europe and beyond the northern hemisphere to the beginning of fall.
This weekend she’s showing up at WomenFest in Key West, Florida before popping off to California’s wine country, Iowa and finally back to one of her favorite places, the Pacific Northwest.
Julie loves escaping to the Pacific Northwest to perform. The environment, landscape people and weather keep beaconing for her to return, which she will again, wrapping up her summer tour at EDEN Pacific Northwest, October 2 – 5 in Seaside, Oregon.
“It’s such a beautiful area. I love a cool, crisp – not too humid – weather,” says Julie. “Everyone I’ve met there is super cool. I keep enjoy going back.”
When Julie isn’t making her fans laugh on the small screen, she’s busy working with her writing partner Brandy Howard on scripts, writing for TV shows, and might appear on TV again soon, but she couldn’t discuss this new project.
Julie has no plans on slowing down. She just wants to keep doing stand up, writing with Brandy and working on TV shows behind the scenes and in front of the camera.
Girls That Roam caught up with Julie while she was recovering from the wrap up party of the first season of Bravo’s People’s Couch, which she hopes returns in the fall season, talking about a life of making people laugh, her dream to travel like a “rich person,” and all the places she wants to return to.
A Born Funny Girl
You could say Julie went to the Mel Brooks’ school of comedy. Inspired by the comedian, Julie ran around spouting the famed funny man’s lines and reenacting scenes from his movies as a little girl. By the time she was 14 years old she enrolled herself in an improv class at her temple and went to a Jewish convention where she was enthralled by the two comedians who performed there.
“I said, ‘I want to do that,’” she approached one of the comedians after the show who invited her to a comedy club where he performed regularly. That was the start of her improv and sketch career at the Comedy Connection in Boston.
“I was a freshman in high school I started doing stand up,” says Julie, who hasn’t looked back since.
She still doesn’t know how she got away with being in a comedy club at such a tender age, but she’s been doing comedy for about 25 years.
“I just can’t stop doing it because it’s ultimate freedom,” says Julie, who uses comedy to express herself as a Jewish lesbian and a woman in a misogynistic world filled with social injustices. “I love it. I love it!”
Boss Lady
Ultimate freedom to her means being the boss and speaking her mind.
“Some people just don’t want their feathers ruffled and I just don’t care about that,” says Julie, laughing.
It’s not that she doesn’t care, but she’s not going to let other people’s opinions of her make her veer off her personal track.
“I care in a certain way, but at the same time I don’t. I’m not going to necessarily give in to people not liking me,” says Julie, about standing tall rather than being desperate to be liked or falling apart if people don’t like her.
The cold hard fact is that “people get offended, people get insulted, [and] people don’t think that something is funny,” says Julie matter-of-factly.
“I’m certainly not going to be told because someone says you can’t say this word or that word, because this isn’t funny, that is useless to me,” continues Julie, who describes her form of comedy as “irreverence” and sometimes a bit silly, a little outrageous and slightly politically incorrect.
“What about me? That bothers me, now I’m offended. Where does that stop? I’m offended that you are offended. I’m offended that you don’t like me or that you don’t think that this word is offensive. Now what do we do? Now we are all offended. Well that’s no way to live,” says Julie taking off on a tangent.
“I’m doing this work and being this person,” adds Julie. “You just have to let go of all of that. You can’t please everyone.”
With that said she does want people to laugh and laugh hard and out loud.
“I do want people to laugh and I want people to have fun,” says Julie.
“When it’s really working and it’s really alive and everyone is connected and people are laughing, for me it is everything. It makes me feel confident and good about myself and that I’m contributing something to the world,” says Julie, who enjoys being a “part of the sort of collective consciousness that is happening in a room.”
The best moment for her is when she hears the roar of laughter in the darkness from the stage no matter how benign or risqué the joke or where the people are from, they get it.
“It feels inspiring, it feels empowering and it feels like in this moment that we are sharing it’s nothing but goodness … that feeling is incredible,” says Julie.
On the Road
She’s traversed the US, some of Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean, but unfortunately, touring doesn’t allow much time to stop and explore a city beyond airports and nightclubs very often. That’s just the life of a working comedian.
So, when Julie gets the chance to take off with her friends or a special girl, “I’m going somewhere to have fun. I love it. I’m having a good time.”
Beaches and mountains are on her must-see travel itinerary when she’s not city hopping. Escaping to jaunts up the West Coast from her Los Angeles abode to Santa Barbara and San Diego or really getting away from it all in Montana and Utah. That’s just in the states.
Well traveled, there are many places Julie wants to return to. One of her favorite places in the world is Paris.
“I would love to be in Paris all of the time,” says Julie about the City of Lights.
Second on her list is the East Coast, she says. She recently returned for a show in Ogunquit, Maine and realized, “I just forgot like how absolutely gorgeous it is and how much I would like to go back and spend some time there.”
She also dreams of taking a road trip through New England and southern Main.
“I like going to the East Coast,” says the Boston native who adores her hometown accent and chowder. “I miss it there and I like being there.”
She also would like to take a West Coast adventure along the coast, hitting San Diego and Santa Barbara and sipping her way through Sonoma and Napa.
“I would like to go to Napa again and do that entire area,” Julie says.
She’s been to Amsterdam and London, both places she would like to see again.
Yet, she hasn’t been everywhere. Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Montana and Utah filler with curiosity, she says. She would like to travel through the countryside of northern and southern France, correction, she would like to take six months and travel through the countryside of Europe.
“I would do it like a rich person: gorgeous hotels, cars everywhere, trains – just comfort. Eating, get fat, have fun and drink, drink, drink,” says Julie.
Honestly, in the end she just wants to go back to Paris.
“I just want to back to Paris. Quite honestly, I want to go to Paris. That’s where I want to go,” says Julie, who loves food, alcohol and art history.
“I love to eat,” says Julie. “I want to go to the restaurants that everybody goes to. I want to eat the food that is in that town.”
She’s also an avid reader and appreciates art history, architecture and history, but it all returns to food and wine.
“After the historical part, yup, let’s go eat and drink now. That was so interesting about the inquisition and that last pope, now I would like to go get drunk,” jokes Julie about her interests.
As a woman who is always on the road for work or pleasure, she’s quite a professional at getting around.
Julie loves using the Internet to research different places when she’s home or traveling.
“The internet is your best friend,” says Julie. Need a restaurant recommendation? Yelp. Not quite sure what you are looking for? Google it. Not near a computer? Whip out your smartphone or tablet, there’s an app for everything.
With all of the apps, women can “just show up somewhere and get through a town with just your phone,” says Julie.
What she’s learned from being on the road for work and pleasure is that “airports are horrible everywhere,” and, “in general no matter where you go people are really quite nice,” says Julie.
“Traveling is good for you. It’s good for people to do,” says Julie, who encourages people to “get out of your bubble” by experiencing different places, people, food and more. “You don’t have to like everything you see or everyone you meet, but it’s good to get that muscle and just be a person of the world.”
You can catch Julie live this fall at:
September 4 – 7: WomenFest in Key West, Florida
September 12 – 14: Russian River Women’s Weekend 2.0 in Sonoma Valley, California
September 27: Iowa Women’s Music Festival in Iowa City
October 2 – 5: EDEN Pacific Northwest in Seaside, Oregon
To book your next adventure, contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at Travel Advisors of Los Gatos at 408-354-6531at or .
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