November 2019 - Muppet bouncers, surprise Todd Barry and a sky badger
This trip certainly ticked the box for quantity of comedy, if not necessarily quality, so this is going to be a long post. Plus there was a sky badger, but that comes later....
We had arrived in NYC on Wednesday and don't normally do a show on the first night for fear of running out of steam. However Hot Soup's offshoot GOOD EGGS was on at The New York Comedy Club's East Village room and had Adrienne Iapalucci listed. Without the discount code they were looking for a rather steep cover fee of $61 but fortunately that was all magically waived.
The venue setup has been tweaked slightly since its days as Eastville's location but is basically the same. They've got rid of the (I think) one draft beer Eastville used to offer in favour of a bottles-only beer list, all of which are fully priced. We lasted until the end (and it was nice to see Matt Ruby and Gary Vider) but the show wasn't the best and with our three beers and a water ending up at just under 50 bucks, I'm not sure we'd hurry back to this "free" show. The original Tuesday night version now has a $10 cover but might end up costing less as the Fat Black Pussycat drinks are way cheaper.
On the Thursday night I was targeting a new location. Bomb Shelter Comedy is run weekly in the basement of a pub called The Gaf West, conveniently close to where we stay in Manhattan. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to discover this place. Their FB page has a picture of Judah Friedlander performing and the published lineup usually has at least one person I've heard of. I went through the list of those scheduled for our night and there was no poison so it seemed fair to give it a shot.
We bought a drink upstairs and were given a paper wristband, which is WAY more organisation and formality than bar shows usually provide. We took our seats with a smallish crowd and hoped for the best. Quite early on a drunk Welsh bloke and his long-suffering wife turned up. He was pretty keen to be involved which didn't help the already slightly underwhelming evening. Then a performer (no need for specifics) came on and was so consistently woeful, whilst all the time apparently blissfully unaware of the fact, that we lost the will to continue and made for the stairs.
I had a bit more confidence about Friday's show though. I had heard good things about Live At The Barbershop from the folks on the Keeping Joe podcast. Yes, it's in an actual barbershop (on the Lower East Side) and although it's $14 to get in, it is BYOB. The photo from the Eventbrite booking page actually shows a girl swigging from a wine bottle so we knew to take plastic glasses with us.
Doors were 8 for an 8:30 show so we turned up at 8:10 to find we were first there and, annoyingly, the show would actually start at 9pm. We chose seats that would allow for an easy escape if things went pear-shaped and watched as the room gradually filled up with people, almost all of whom would cast around to see if anyone had plastic glasses. The compere wasn't the absolute best and nor were any of the first three acts. At this point we were out of wine and my girlfriend was out of patience, so after surveying the comics waiting to come on and not seeing anyone who inspired confidence, we utilised our carefully-planned exit strategy.
On the Saturday the aforementioned girlfriend was off to see the matinee of a terrible play so I had free rein. The best bet was an open-mic at The Stand NYC. I used to love spending Sunday afternoons at the mic at The Stand's old location but the show got binned about a year before the venue shut down in favour of a "lunch 'n' laughs" style gig. Surprisingly the mic was in the larger, downstairs area but I enjoyed myself, even though the aircon was set for a much fuller room.
Sunday wasn't meant to be a comedy day but given that our three attempts so far hadn't met with resounding success, we were intrigued by the prospect of Mark Normand doing an hour at the Fat Black Pussycat (the best of the three Comedy Cellar venues). The cover was only $10 and Mark had been missing from the NYCC show on the Wednesday. It was nominally sold out so we decided to turn up early in the hope that not everyone who had reserved tickets actually appeared. The next section will contain quite a lot of bitching but it's my story, I can write what I want.
Arriving at the door we explained the situation and Muppet Bouncer 1 told us to buy a drink and wait on the far side of the pool table. It would be just a couple of minutes before showtime until we could be admitted. Muppet Bouncer 2 added that we would probably get in. We waited and a queue slowly formed behind us. Once there were about 20 people in the queue, MB1 came up and told us to join the back of the line. I queried why but he was insistent and reluctant to discuss the matter further. I figured that if he'd checked that everyone behind us had a ticket (although I doubted that he had done this) then it didn't make any difference where we stood.
They started admitting people into the room and it transpired that lots of those in front of us also didn't have tickets. My girlfriend was DELIGHTED with this particular development. We got to the front of the queue and were told that we might get in but there were people in front of us waiting too. ARE THERE? ARE THERE FUCKIN REALLY??? And that we should now wait outside. We politely pointed out that we'd been here first and had followed instructions, including weirdly moving down the queue. The woman said that she was sorry that we'd been told that. WTF DOES THAT MEAN? YOU'RE SORRY YOUR STAFF CAN'T DO THEIR JOBS??? However we still had to wait outside.
We headed for the front door and MB2 stopped us because you're not allowed to take drinks onto the pavement. YOU SUGGESTED WE BUY THESE, REMEMBER? HOW CAN YOU BE SO ASTONISHINGLY PISH AT YOUR JOBS? THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE SHOWS A DAY ON IN HERE! IS THIS LITERALLY THE FIRST DAY FOR BOTH OF YOU??? I didn't say. He reluctantly let us stand on the inside with our beers.
There was a further minor debacle with the actual seating which we can skip over, the presence of a very poor support act (he joked that IUD sounds a bit like IED - HAHAHAHAHA - kill me) and the fact that it took us 50 minutes to get our first drink. However (deep breath) Mark was brilliant. He's a thoughtful, challenging, intelligent comic. I could watch him all day.
Monday was designated another "girlfriend goes to a terrible play" day. I had booked a ticket (free on Eventbrite/$5 on the door) to a show called Freestyle (nothing to do with the Edinburgh Fringe banker that Molland and Sullivan do) in a pub called The Bowery Electric. There were eight comics listed of which I only knew two (both acceptable) AND there was mention of free pizza.
Although advertised to start at 7:30, which is when the pizza turned up, we actually got going around 8:10 in the atmospheric back room seating about 25. A slightly sick Wendi Starling did reasonably, I was impressed by a new find called Rell Battle and then VERIFIED CELEBRITY Todd Barry turned up! He's been doing quite a lot of small gigs recently at places like The Creek with a show title of "Todd Barry works on new jokes and improves older jokes". I was meant to be meeting my girlfriend at The Stand for some food before Frantic but obviously prioritised Todd. I can get another girlfriend.
Once Todd had left the stage I followed him out (not in a creepy way) and headed for The Stand. After some disappointing food and a too-long wait for the check we moved downstairs for the 10pm Frantic show. Once again Kerryn Feehan was the host, rather than the amazing Aaron Berg, but he did put in an appearance later on. Dan Soder was very good talking about being white trash and although we were really there to see Ari Shaffir, he was taking his sweet time finishing up on the Legion Of Skanks podcast (recording upstairs at the same time). After about 1hr 40 we felt we'd seen enough so ended up missing him (assuming he made it downstairs at some point).
On the Tuesday we headed for Ambush Comedy in Williamsburg. I had been once before and was amazed by the quality of comics. My recollection of the evening is a little hazy, due, in no small way, to the alcohol level of the IPA they had on draft. Kate Willett was a new find but sadly no one else made a huge impression. It would have been theoretically possible to catch Hot Soup at the Fat Black Pussycat after (with Judah set to appear) but getting the subway home was definitely the best option.
New York Trip Stats
Shows Entered - 8
Shows left early for whatever reason - 4
Expenditure - $24
After New York we were visiting Austin and Santa Barbara. I had resigned myself to no comedy in SB but Austin seemed to have a bit of a scene, though a tweet asking for tips hadn't yielded anything. As we were wandering around we noticed a small place called The Velveeta Room (next to a famous venue that I had discounted due to it mentioning magic on their website). They had a show headlined by a local called Andrew Murphy the next night and after some googling, we decided to risk it.
The show worked out well and with no drink minimum and $5 wines there was very little to complain about. There was one notable incident though.
The show was about to start and the long, skinny room was probably about half full. I was looking around and something caught my eye in the roofing, amongst the lights and the cables and the aircon ducting. It looked like an animal. "I think there's an animal up there" I said to my girlfriend, pointing skyward. "What, like a rat?" she asked. "No. Much bigger. Look there!". "Oh yeah" she acknowledged, adding "Like a sort of white-faced badger. He doesn't look very happy". "Well it's hardly his natural environment" I said before incorrectly stating "They don't have badgers in the US. Maybe it's a raccoon".
I imagined that there would be quite the commotion if the animal fell out the ceiling so I went up to the barman to let him know.
"Excuse me. This is going to sound weird but did you know that there's an animal in your ceiling?"
"What?"
"There's an animal. In amongst the roofing. I'm not sure what it is. I just wondered if the club had some sort of pet and maybe it had got out?"
"What?"
"It's not just me, my girlfriend has seen it too. It's not small. If it falls it's going to cause a fuss."
"I'll let the owner know".
I interpreted this closing phrase as "Please go away". I went back to my seat but was understandably struggling to concentrate 100% on what was happening on the stage. After about 30 minutes it reappeared and was now directly over the audience, so had moved about 10 feet. It was a couple of feet long and again I couldn't help but consider what would happen if it lost its grip and plummeted to the ground, landing on an unsuspecting comedy punter. We were out of wine so I went back up to the bar.
"It's still up there by the way."
"What is?"
We managed to get through the entire show without it coming back into view. I hope it was OK.
September 2019
This was a short, last-minute trip so comedy opportunities were going to be limited. However I think I did pretty well.
Due to taking different routes to NYC I arrived on the Friday several hours before my girlfriend. Mid-afternoon options are limited to open mics so I headed along to the Peoples One Minute mic at Otto's Shrunken Head. The format had changed a bit since I was last there (or maybe it's always different on a Friday) but it passed the time and I had the exact same conversation with host Jimmy as I've had on two previous occasions. It's nice to be so memorable.
My big opportunity for standup was Sunday night as my gf was heading off to see Madonna in Brooklyn. Revisiting Bad News: It's A Comedy Show at The Cherry Tree seemed logistically sensible, given that Madonna's venue was just a short walk away. It wasn't quite the standard as my previous visit but I enjoyed Dan Wilbur and Aparna Nancherla. I was temporarily blessed with having the drunkest man in the world sit beside me but fortunately he lurched off after 20 minutes.
As this gig finished just before 9pm I had several options to follow it up with another show, including an open mic at Old Man Hustle and something at the Creek and the Cave in Queens. However I was quite keen to revisit Comedy at the Beauty Bar on the lower east side of Manhattan and the transport to get there was favourable. I arrived just as the host was finishing so basically saw every comic. As before Jeff Arcuri, who is a producer of the show, was by far the standout act.
Monday was our last night in town and as ever, it's hard to turn down Frantic at Stand NYC. As with our previous visit it was hosted by Kerryn Feehan rather than the incredible Aaron Berg. Fortunately he was one of the acts and spent the first few minutes of his set ruthlessly and hilariously tearing the audience apart. I stayed for nearly 2 hours but there were still comics coming on. TJ Miller was billed to appear but hadn't by the time I left. What was probably most notable was someone dying so hard that they got allocated a -2 on my rating system. That takes them into a very exclusive club.
Trip Stats
Show seen - 4
Free drinks won - 1 (BN:IACS)
Expenditure - $5
July 2019
This trip started with some logistical stupidity, but that’s got nothing to do with standup. What it did mean was that my arrival on the Tuesday night was sufficiently late that there was no way I was going to make Todd Barry and Roy Wood Jr at the newly-reopened Stand NYC. Damn you Aer Lingus and your short connections!
Wednesday night was the first opportunity for comedy. We booked 2 (free) tickets for the ALL STARS comedy night in Tribeca (with spots from Aaron Berg and Caitlin Peluffo advertised). This part of Manhattan isn’t exactly known for comedy - in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything in the area. It transpired that the show was in a basement of a restaurant called Bon Courage. The alarm bells weren’t totally sounding at this point – plenty of bar shows are in basements and backrooms – but once we got down they were sounding loud and clear. There was no stage but a mic stand was set up in a small alcove of the room. The main problem was that there were a LOT of people dining, all chatting in an animated fashion. There was no possibility that this roomful of people were about to politely pipe down so some comics could do their funny-haha jokes. We tried to get a beer but were told that some wait staff would be with us. Ten minutes later with no comedians or wait staff in sight we binned it.
It was about two days later that I realised that we could still have made it to New York Comedy Club in time for their (free) Hot Soup show. I am an idiot.
Thursday night was going to be our first visit to the new Stand NYC. I was genuinely quite excited. The restaurant side of the operation has certainly expanded and the bar looks significantly more “upscale” than it did before.
We were there for a show called Citywide ($10) hosted by Shane Gillis (decent) and Abby Rosenquist (unknown). The main draw, other than the venue, was the stainmaster himself, Sam Morril. I ordered two Lagunitas at the bar and was told it was “an even twenty”. I confess that I still don’t fully understand why bars do and sometimes don’t add tax onto drinks. In the old Stand NYC Lagunitas was $8 and you were charged $8 and then left a $1 tip. Here they were $9, somehow got to $10 (that’s not the right amount of tax) and I declined to leave a tip.
The performance space is basically a glassed in area at the end of the restaurant, not unlike a fancy meeting room in an office. Shane Gillis was apparently in Montreal (did no one think to mention it?) so he was replaced a very poor comic who vaped on stage (yup!). The whole show was underwhelming apart from Caitlin Peluffo (again) and obviously Sam, who I’m very fond of. The service was ropey as hell and it took an age to actually get out of the place. It wasn’t quite the debut experience I had hoped for.
We don’t normally do standup on a Friday but the Comedians You Should Know team who are usually at The Gutter in Williamsburg on Wednesday nights had taken over Littlefield in Gowanus for a one-off show ($10) and the headliner was Judah Friedlander. There was a good selection of other comics on, most of whom I hadn’t heard of, so I was really looking forward to the show. In the end it was a pretty grim affair with not a single performer grabbing our attention until Mr Friedlander came on to close.
We were over in Brooklyn again on Sunday and I was keen to try a show called Bad News: It’s a Comedy Show in what turned out to be the backroom of The Cherry Tree bar ($5). The only real draw was Caitlin Peluffo (she’s a busy lass!) but conversely there was no poison on the bill (though Carmen Lagala hadn’t done great at CYSK at Littlefield two days before). It turned into a very successful evening with a small but friendly crowd. Someone called Sam Evans (I’m going off of scribbled notes) was the one I’ll most readily look out for.
As we’d only been in the small “upstairs” room at Stand NYC we decided to round off our trip with the free Frantic show at 10pm on the Monday night in their “main” room. It’s definitely a larger space than they had before, but they’ve still gone with a reasonable seating arrangement i.e. they’ve not packed people too close together.
There appeared to be quite a big, noisy group in which could have disrupted the show. However the regular MC (Aaron Berg) is so good I was confident he could handle the situation. As it turned out they didn’t cause too much fuss which was just as well as Kerryn Feehan was actually the host and was WAY less competent.
At the point that we left (a good bit before the end) I had allocated five (FIVE!) minus ones to comics on the bill with only the ever-dependable Mark Normand (“COMEDY!”) getting a plus one and Yedoye Travis getting a neutral mark. When I tried to settle up they lost my credit card, then claimed they couldn’t accept it and I ended up paying with cash and leaving in a somewhat exasperated state about 20 minutes after standing up to go. I’m hoping this second debacle was just teething problems.
Trip Stats
Comedy shows seen – 4
Comedy shows aborted – 1
Hit rate for seeing Caitlin Peluffo – 33.3%
Total ticket expenditure – $25
March 2019
I had two comedy nights pencilled into my five night (Fri-Wed) trip. My girlfriend had a ticket for an Alan Cumming play on the Sunday which meant I could go and see some terrible comedy in an obscure location, plus we had planned to go to Stand NYC’s Frantic Monday pop-up the following night if at all possible.
Late Friday afternoon my girlfriend insisted on going for a sleep and to say she was not keen to get up would be an understatement. Consequently I found myself with a free evening but had done no planning whatsoever. Amateur. As with most big cities, the Friday and Saturday evening comedy crowd can be quite different from the rest of the week, so I plumped for a visit to The Creek And The Cave in Long Island City. They have a regular feature where a performer does “A Week at the Creek”, starting at 7pm and usually from Monday to Saturday. Jordan Temple was appearing, who I'd caught at a bar show called Brown Mirror in December, so that became the plan.
I arrived late but still had time to get a beer before the host (Paul someone) started. He brought on Shalewa Sharpe who I’d seen before and after another 15 minutes Jordan came on. Unsurprisingly he did the material I had enjoyed at Brown Mirror. The rest of his set was a bit unpractised – later on I realised that his week was starting that night, so I was getting the roughest version of the show. It wasn’t the best but I didn’t begrudge the $5 entry fee (which was going to charity) and the crowd were a nice bunch.
When the show wound up around 9:30pm I figured I might as well try to cram something else in. I’ve attended Old Man Hustle (in Manhattan’s Lower East Side) before so headed across there and got a seat at the bar. They’ve no drafts but I got $1 off my bottle of Lagunitas as it was warm (how don’t you have cold bottles when that’s all you sell???). Host Meghan Walsh was pleasant enough and brought up Mike Albanese who I’ve seen before and enjoyed. I’m not sure whether I was tired or he was poor or maybe I was in a good mood the last time I saw him but things weren’t great. When the bartender Rachel finished her set next, I decided it was time for bed and headed home.
The following day it became apparent that Frantic Monday wasn’t on that week. However the Stand’s 8pm Saturday show had Judah Friedlander, Ari Shaffir and Sean Patton – an absolute belter of a lineup! There was also no poison on the rest of the bill, so despite it being a weekend and a little under $30 per ticket after tax, we booked ourselves in to make up for Monday not happening.
On the morning of the show (!) Ari tweeted that he was going to miss the gig as he had to go to a friend’s wedding. I’m not sure how much notice he got about the wedding but there was no point in complaining. The show went ahead (the venue was a decent space called The Zinc Bar) and everything worked out. Sean Patton stormed it and I enjoyed seeing Bonnie McFarlane for the first time in a while. Dan St Germain closed.
For the Sunday night gig I opted to visit Eastville Comedy Club’s new custom-built location in Brooklyn. I’ve been meaning to get there for a while but things haven’t worked out. Not that it’s terribly relevant to me but they’ve been adopting a policy of a zero-drink minimum which, while common for bars shows, is very unusual for permanent comedy clubs. I don’t know if this is a temporary tactic to draw a crowd while they establish themselves or a permanent change in philosophy.
The lineup was scheduled to be Christian Finnegan (who did the Fringe in 2018), Jordan Carlos, Krystyna Hutchinson, Patrick Schraeder and Raanan Hershberg, all for the princely sum of $5! The room is a slightly better shape than the old venue but the ceiling is quite high (considering they could presumably have dictated a lower one) and with tiling on the walls and (I think) the floors, the metal chairs make a racket when moved and there’s no sound dampening. Christian was great, Krystyna not so much and Jordan was replaced by the excellent Liza Treyger who was as good as I’ve seen her.
I flirted with the idea of trying to fit another show into the evening (Comedy at the Beauty Bar was the most likely candidate) but the weather was shitty and the subways aren’t as frequent on Sundays so I just called it quits.
It then became apparent that Hot Soup Comedy, one of my favourite NYC bars show, was restarting on the Tuesday night in a new location (their previous spot – the Irish Exit – had closed a few weeks before). Given that we were in town and it was a chance to support their relaunch, attendance seemed like a no-brainer. Other than the three producers (Vider, Normand and Ruby) they had Dan Soder, Shane Torres, Courtney Maginnis (host of Let’s See What Else?), Samantha Ruddy and Raanan Hershberg (again!).
The venue is actually pretty decent – a separate room beneath a busy Midtown bar – though could do with a more defined stage (see photo). There’s a trivia quiz on immediately before Hot Soup so the end of that initiates a lot of chair and table moving to set the room up better for comedy. The evening went well with Dan Soder being the highlight. Matt Ruby was maybe a little more subdued than normal. I hope they make a success of the new spot - I’ll definitely be back.
Trip Stats
Comedy shows seen – 5
Comedy shows failed to see – 1
Suspiciously last minute cancellations by Ari Shaffir - 1
Total ticket expenditure – $40