Toronto standup comedy crawled out of the basement clubs and into the open air last night -- courtesy of Russell Peters, who attracted an ethnically mixed crowd of at least 15,000 to the corner of Yonge and Dundas Sts..

Families, friends, mixed-couples, parents with strollers, black, white, Asian and South Asian all squeezed into the enclosure at Dundas Square to catch the internationally acclaimed home-grown comic.

Peters recently sold out the Air Canada Centre -- twice -- to serve notice that one of the whitest of entertainment forms may be catching up with society.

Last night's free show --part of the first Just For Laughs Toronto comedy festival -- pumped life into the Dundas Square street-theatre that the fest hopes will define the event in future years. Stiltwalkers in various Asian motifs circled the area like ornate giraffes as Peters, Filipino-American comic Jo Koy and Italian-Canadian musical duo The Doo-Wops performed.

According to a Just For Laughs spokesman, city officials had confirmed a crowd estimate of 15,000 to 20,000.

It was an event tailor-made for Peters, who doesn't so much open a show as take ethnic attendance and toss out stereotypes to the delight of fans.

"Where are the Koreans? I'm glad you were able to close the dry-cleaners early! Where are the brown bastards (fellow South Asians)? I guess all the dollar stores are closed on Yonge St."

Jamaicans, "Trinis" (Trinidadians), Guyanese -- each cheering section seemed like a noisy affirmation of the new face of the city.

Not that he always pandered to the crowd. Peters danced around the line of taste (if not honesty) when he announced "We've closed off Yonge St.! This is the first time Yonge St. has been closed off without a shooting in a long time."

He also managed to arouse a few grumbles when he "worked" the crowd, asking an audience member if he was Indian, and the guy answered "No, Pakistani."

"Whatever, dude, ask your grandparents where they were born," Peters replied. "What? Am I the only one who knows history?" he added to a handful of boobirds.

It was multicultural Toronto writ large. Peters even invoked the piracy capital of the GTA, the Pacific Mall, describing how he went shopping there and a storeowner tried to sell him his own DVD, packaged in one disc along with material by Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.

L.A. native Koy, whose star is rising in the comedy world, kept the ethnic ball rolling with tales of his Filipino family, and their accents. ("Josep! What the puck are you doing with your fenis?" being the punchline to a scenario in which his mom walks in on him showering. He explains he was doing a Michael Jackson impression).

And the Doo-Wops, one of the most popular musical-comedy acts in the country, played their own side of the ethnic street with a handful of song parodies, including a Bob Marley spoof entitled No Gino, No Cry.

In a multicultural millieu often paralyzed by its own differences and sensitivities, it was a kind of comedic gestalt therapy -- one that saw every cultural group on hand take its lumps for laughs, and like it.