Founded in 2008, The Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival was the world’s first sincere-and-ironic comedy festival that celebrated a close-knit comedy community, while making fun of the trappings of mainstream festival programming.  The festival ran for 10 years in Brooklyn after being started as a joke between Eugene, Julie Smith Clem, and Mike Birbiglia.

In addition to the comedy on stage, festival goers found a bouncy castle with a therapist inside, a roaming CPA dressed like a clown giving tax advice, and a station where you could throw a water balloon at a slam poet for $1.