The “Comedy Bang! Bang!” star got much of his furniture in the neighborhood.
Artwork of a branch that reads “I want to grow to be a tree”
“I just loved it immediately,” comedian and musician Reggie Watts says of Williamsburg, the neighborhood he’s called home since 2008. Two and a half years were spent sleeping on friends’ couches between stints on the road. (Watts spends seven months a year touring.) When he was ready to settle into a place, he had a few specific criteria: proximity to the subway, being in the midst of a lively arts scene and having an elevator for when his mom visits from Montana.
A spacious studio rental with 10-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows in a new-construction building steps from the Bedford L train fit the bill. “This was a building I was always interested in,” says Watts, 40. “Out of all the new buildings that were going up that I hated, this one at least had an interesting façade with the metal and the angles and the wood and bricks. I thought that was dope.”
The high ceilings and Watts’ spare furnishings make the place feel bigger than it is. A large plasma TV is mounted above a desk, viewable from the couch on the opposite wall, creating a compact live/work area. The only other major piece of furniture is his platform bed, atop which sits an organic latex-foam mattress.
“I wanted to find someplace relatively local, like on this continent,” he says of the mattress purchase. “It’s a Canadian company called Essentia. They make their own beds, and they don’t use all the laminates and glues that Tempur-Pedic uses. When you’re rolling around, it really hugs you when you’re moving. I got it a couple months after I moved in here. I had a couple gigs that were pretty well-paying.”
Seeing a Watts show is a special experience. It’s a combination concert, stand-up gig and one-man play. He sings original songs and creates the entire instrumental accompaniment using his voice. He often pares slice-of-life encounters down to their bare, humorous elements.
On a bookcase (left by the last tenant), he’s affixed a label that reads, “A Place To Store Things.” Perched atop is a more effusive expression: a branch carved into the words “I want to grow to be a tree,” fashioned by Brooklyn artist Amit Greenberg.
Watts tries whenever possible to support neighborhood stores in Williamsburg and bought his platform bed (a carbonized bamboo frame) and his desk from Wonk, a furniture company that used to set up shop just a few doors down before it relocated to Clinton Hill. “There are all kinds of DIY start-up places. The Mast Brothers started just a couple doors down making chocolate, and there are a lot of little bookstores and craft stores,” he says of his hood.
Though he has a desk, Watts doesn’t work in the traditional way. “I just kind of hang out, and when it’s time to perform, I perform,” he says. “Or I’ll get some studio time and decide to do something there. All day long, I’m singing or making noises or beats, but I don’t necessarily log things. Sometimes, I might record an idea, but even then, I never go back to the recording. It’s a lazy man’s way of producing things.”
When he’s home, he spends the days getting coffee and lunch with friends, going to the movies or catching up on his favorite TV shows, which include sitcoms like “Community,” as well as dramas like “Downton Abbey” and “Mad Men.”
“I love period pieces that just research the time period so thoroughly that you just fall into it,” he says.
Watts recently starred in his own TV show, the talk-show spoof “Comedy Bang! Bang!” which premiered its first season on IFC last year.
“It’s a hyper-surreal take on a talk show. Guests on a couch and everything. It’s kind of dumb and absurd in the best way possible. It’s Mister Rogers meets Craig Kilborn, but it looks like it’s in your grandparents’ basement. There are a lot of taxidermied animals and weird books on the shelves. I’m like the Paul Shaffer of it.
“It’s a really fun show, but it’s daunting. It’s a lot of work. Now that we’re doing another season, I’m thinking, getting into that groove again is going to be kind of a trip.”
When he goes to LA to film the second season, he’ll be staying in comedian Natasha Leggero’s “guest bungalow basement.” While he’s away, he can use the Nest thermostat he was given at a tech conference to regulate the temperature in his apartment from across the country. Says Watts, “I’m interested in technology, where it’s headed and if things are helpful to people or not.”
Reggie Watts’
favorite things
*Artwork of a branch that reads “I want to grow to be a tree”
*Bel Canto digital-to-analog converter
*Harmony universal remote
*Essentia organic, latex memory-foam mattress
*Wonk platform bed
* Vaporizer
*Nest thermostat