FILE: Ali Wong at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards held at the Santa Monica Pier on Feb. 25, 2024, in Santa Monica, Calif.

Ali Wong packs nice, reputable venues like the Masonic. A dress she wore in a comedy special hangs in the Smithsonian. She’s scored Emmys for her Netflix series, “Beef.” But before the comedian and actor walked the red carpet, she honed her craft at a gauntlet of smaller San Francisco venues — a circuit that involved catfishing audiences, a laundromat and a good deal of human waste.

Wong grew up in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, attended UCLA and moved to New York in her 20s. Although Wong’s comedy career first took flight on the East Coast, she’s continued to lean into her local ties, as she did in her romantic comedy, “Always Be My Maybe,” which was filmed all over San Francisco. And in a recent interview, she confirmed that she performed........

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