Given that we were in NY for seven nights and one was lost to arriving late and another to a surprise birthday event, I was pretty happy cramming in five different shows.

From about a month before we’d seen adverts stating that Judah Friedlander was doing a long set at the Village Underground for $15 per head. It’s far from being my favourite venue but that was the location and there was a promise of 60 minutes of new material i.e. not in his Netflix special. The start time of 8pm on a Monday night also meant we could theoretically combine it with the 10pm show Frantic Monday at the Stand NYC.

We arrived at the venue in good time and got the better of the two seats at our table for four (the Cellar and the Village Underground have some very stupid seating configurations). Joyelle Johnson and Janelle James opened for him and neither made much of an impression. Judah came on after about 45 mins, did some typically-excellent crowd work, tried some new stuff and then quite quickly went back to the Q&A format about his presidency that he mined so successfully in his special. At about the 1hr 45 mark he seemed to be coming to a close and figuring we could beat the exiting crowd and maybe just scrape into Frantic before Aaron’s standard blistering opening, we made for the door. I’ve never not enjoyed a World Champion show but the whole package that night was a little under-whelming.

After a quick taxi ride we managed to take semi-decent seats about 30 seconds before the start at the Stand NYC. Other than the compere the initial appeal of this particular show had been that Ari Shaffir and Nikki Glazer were to appear. By the day of the show Ari had disappeared from the bill but Nikki was still there, as well as the ever-dependable Mark Normand. Aaron Berg came on and as usual he had evaluated/insulted the entire front two rows within the first minute. The show was a little up and down with no Nikki or Mark and a surprisingly average Joe List but on the flipside, the fantastic Pete Lee did a short set to get the crowd ready for the recording of a stand-up set by Aaron. Mike Albanese was new to me and someone I’ll definitely look out for again and there was one other comic of interest who I’m still trying to track down.

I’d never actually visited the West Side Comedy Club but had an oddly pessimistic feeling about it. However it’s about eight blocks from where we stay and has had a number of names drop in since its 2017 opening (Seinfeld and Bill Burr) so we opted to try their Tuesday night show, Anything But Your Act. It was only going to be $7 cover and a 1 drink minimum. The seating layout reminds me a bit of the Broadway Comedy Club (this isn’t a compliment) and we passed on the first set of seats we were offered, favouring something nearer the door in case the show (where comics can try out anything apart from their normal act) didn’t deliver. The first disappointment was one of the acts starting to do covers of famous songs with a guitar. It wasn’t really clear whether the show was underway or he was just providing background music. Regardless, he was shit. The next thing to annoy me was the manager loudly chatting to someone behind me for at least two minutes while an act was on. Oddly unprofessional. After about 45 minutes and nothing particularly interesting happening we headed for freedom. It’s going to take quite a line-up to get me back there.

When my girlfriend is with me the comedy has to be of a certain standard. When she’s not there I can travel for miles just to watch some absolute nonsense. As there was a dreadful play on that she wanted to see in Greenwich Village, I was able to indulge whatever comedic whims I fancied. I thought about travelling to Gowanus, Brooklyn for the well-regarded Fancy Show, but the journey home can take a while so opted for something a little closer at a venue called Old Man Hustle on the Lower East side of Manhattan.

However before that I had some time to kill so called in at The Grisly Pear on Macdougal, just along from the Comedy Cellar, to catch the end of an open-mic. There were a couple of little snatches of interest and one bloke, instead of paying for the mic, had brought along a pizza which was descended upon by the few that had stayed till the end. Once that was done I headed over to Old Man Hustle and found it to be a tiny, skinny bar with maybe 14 seats and standing room for another 10. I assumed that there was a back room where the comedy would happen but no, it turned out that the comedy would all be on approximately six square feet of stage at the end of the bar. On the face of it this seems like an impractical idea as some people in the bar will want to chat and that will disrupt the comedy but everyone seemed either to be there for the stand-up or polite enough not to talk during the one hour show. The room had a nice ambience even if the comedy wasn’t of that high a standard, the exception being Wendi Starling.

I didn’t speak to him about it but what I think has happened is that a comic has bought a bar and decided to put comedy on every night (at 8pm). It’s a little bit like Monkey Barrel in Edinburgh but way less professional. He also puts himself on the bill quite often and who can blame him.