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