We arrived on Tuesday and despite being a bit jet-lagged, staggered along to Hot Soup at the Irish Exit. No special guests this time but it was nice to catch Mark Normand (see slightly blurry photo) trying out new stuff after burning a whole heap of material on his Amy Schumer-produced special. On Wednesday we tried Comedians You Should Know for the first time at The Gutter in Williamsburg. As I mention in the venues list, this is an extremely atmospheric room and one I’m keen to go back to. It’s only $5 to reserve a seat and they had several big name comedians on, plus a selection of up and coming ones. A requirement for any NYC visit is to see Judah Friedlander at least once. Ideally it would be at Stand NYC but some flexibility is required. Our best bet looked like being at Eastville but the most convenient show was on Saturday night which I usually try to avoid. By being on Eastville’s mailing list I often get sent free tickets (even to the Friday and Saturday shows) but annoyingly no such email had turned up. I remembered seeing something on bestnewyorkcomedy.com about comps and sure enough, they booked us in for the Saturday. On the Sunday afternoon I went to the Stand NYC open-mic. I was surprised to see Daniel Simonsen outside talking to Frank Terranova. I’d seen the pair appear on the same stage in Brooklyn (at the Human Citizen Comedy Show) but they don’t strike me as sharing much common ground, comedy wise. Frank made his usual impression and Daniel lurched through some very hesitant ideas. Wednesday night was a bit more problematic. Sean Donnelly often comperes at the The Cellar but I’ve seen him several times doing normal standup. He was scheduled to do a solo show at the Fat Black Pussy Cat and I wanted to a) Catch him doing a long set b) Make sure the place was full. We reserved tickets and were looking forward to it - the venue is the best of the 3 in the Comedy Cellar family and the cover was only $5. When we arrived things were a fairly chaotic. Colin Quinn was doing a WIP show in the same room and appeared to be running over. We had booked (and crucially paid for) tickets for the 10pm show at the Stand and with Sean’s show scheduled to be 80 minutes, that only gave us 10 minutes to get between venues. It took ages to clear the room as everyone was either trying to take photos with CQ or wanted to pose gormlessly on the stage (like they’d never been in a feckin comedy club in the lives). We were now well past the start time and seating hadn’t even started so we made the reluctant decision to ditch the first show and head to the Stand. I genuinely felt like I’d let Sean down. I’ve seen Ari Shaffir many times in NYC and hugely enjoyed his Edinburgh Fringe show last year. Having spoken to Bob Slayer I suspected he wasn’t appearing at Fringe in 2017 (since proven correct) and since he had just returned to NYC and was on almost every lineup at the Stand, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. The fact that Pete Lee was on the same bill (as was Liza Treyger who I’ve been meaning to see for ages) made it all the better. It was a phenomenally good set and with Ari on first (which we would have missed if we’d stayed at Sean) I had to accept that we’d made the right decision. I’ll try and see Sean next time. The last show of the trip was “Lasers in the Jungle” at UCB East, which was a new venue to me. It’s a pleasant enough space and the comics on that particular bill show seemed a little less accomplished and commercially-driven than those you might see at the big clubs, but it was an enjoyable 90 minutes. I probably won’t race back there unless there’s someone named on the bill that I’m particularly keen on,