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.