This was a busy trip with nine shows across eight different venues, including a boathouse and an art gallery.
The day after arriving is never a time to get too ambitious (in case tiredness/drunkenness suddenly make its presence felt). We opted for the geographically handy (Hell's Kitchen) and modestly priced (zero) Bomb Shelter Comedy, downstairs at a pub called The Gaf West. I had a wee chat to the boy shepherding people downstairs. He was impressed that we'd been before (and come back) and once again attached a (surely unnecessary) paper wrist band to each of us. We got a really quite fully-priced beer in and headed to the seats. The line-up was scribbled on a black board.
We weren't wowed by the host but the first comic up (Stephanie Holmes) was decent enough, before things went into a steady decline. There was a fair amount of noise bleed from upstairs and also from the waiting comedians mere feet to our left who must have imagined that they were invisible or at least inaudible. Once our drinks were done we made for the stairs. We saw maybe 6 comics. That counts. Tick.
Friday was to be deliciously speculative. Gowanus is a slightly grungy part of Brooklyn, home to some good venues (Littlefield/The Bell House) and several decent bars. It also has a canal which at one point was the most polluted stretch of water in NYC, so it's got that going for it. A new comedy night called Cuba Libre started up recently, basing itself in The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club Boathouse. Yup, you read all those words right. The line-up was full of unknowns, though there was one -1 on the list, plus someone called Gina Hyena. I mean, come on, you're not serious about your comedy with that stage name.
Tickets were only $5 but the alcohol situation was worryingly vague. There would be beers available for a donation. What sort of beers? How many? The last time I let myself get embroiled in this sort of situation I ended up drinking a can of Budweiser at Camouflage Comedy and that sort of shit is not happening again. We stopped at a nearby liquor store to buy some emergency screwcap wine. The lady robustly scolded me for asking for a paper bag, screeching over-dramatically "on Earth Day!". She tried to sell us a $15 magnum which would definitely have been a bad idea.
We did get some beer from their modestly-stocked cooler and settled down in what has to be one of the weirdest places I have ever watched a comedy show. Perhaps inevitably (we were sitting in a concrete building surrounded by canoes) the standard wasn't great, though Alan Massenburg was promising. After four comics the only ones left were the -1 and Gina. That seemed like the ideal time to depart. Because I bought the tickets through Eventbrite they still send me emails about upcoming shows and as I type this, Hari Kondabolu is on tonight's show! There was no sign of anyone of his standard when we were there!
Sunday was to be Comedy at The Beauty Bar. It's a weird Gramercy Park/LES bar that is also, sort of, a beauty salon. You know, one of those bar/beauty salon places. We've all been to one. I've visited a few times before with mostly positive results. The room is decent, the drinks are cheap and there is no cover charge. What's not to like?
Jeff Scheen was a pleasant host. I googled him and his management's website says "His off beat humor and affable demeanor pairs well with expressive yet stupid face" which is just terrific. Ryan Donahue also got a tick and Andrea Allan (who I am Facebook friends with but I think she might be friends with tens of thousands of people) and Liz Cassidy (who was new to me) were both excellent.
Monday night at 8pm was to be our first visit to The Stand. A lot of the acts, maybe all the ones of interest, were also on the free 10pm show (Frantic). However, and I'm not going to bitch about it again, there are certain drawbacks with that show, not least that it can really run on, so we opted to pay $15 for the conventional offering. The main draws were Ari Shaffir, Phil Wang and Vladimir Caamano. I've written before about how one of two possible things is happening at The Stand. 1. My considerable fame as a top-level comedy reviewer has made its way across the Atlantic. 2. They think I'm someone else. Make your own minds up. We were the 2nd couple down the stairs to get seated. The bloke doing the seating took the first pair to a table and started to tell us to wait before spotting everyone's favourite reviewer and immediately motioned that we could sit anywhere. Once we were sat down, it transpired that we'd need to retrieve beers from upstairs and while I was away the boy came over, shook my girlfriend's hand and thanked her for coming. I wish I knew who he thinks I am.
The show was adequate. The compere was not great but we were chuffed when he brought on an unlisted Ian Lara. As it turned out he was probably in place of Vladamir who did not appear. Ari was decent enough and I quite enjoyed Jon Rudnitsky who was new to me. No one else really appealed and Phil Wang was also missing.
Girlfriend was off to a terrible play on Tuesday which allowed me to go to something weird. I could easily have been persuaded to visit The Fat Black Pussycat. They had a mid-evening show with Sam Morril and Matteo Lane (who I recently saw at the Soho Theatre in London) supplemented by Lenny Marcus and Ethan Simmon-Patterson. Finally, Jackie Fabulous, who presumably went down the same naming route as Gina Hyena, was billed. However I was too slow in reserving a ticket and while I could have queued and probably got in, there were other options available.
There's a show called Art Gallery Comedy that is $10, BYOB and takes place in an art gallery in Chinatown. I'll grant you that it's not as strange as being surrounded by canoes but I liked the sound of it and it was to be headlined by Mark Normand who I have a lot of time for. There was one -1 on the bill and the rest were unknowns. Old Man Hustle is only a couple of blocks away so I swung in past there to see if they had a late show that I could turn up for after the gallery but they had Aaron Berg doing a solo gig in their tiny space and their normal "almost an open-mic" shows were off.
I was first in to the gallery and found it to be just 30 seats (three rows of six plus a few at the side) set up amidst colourful, abstract and almost certainly ludicrously-priced art. A couple came in after me and the woman asked if it was OK to sit beside me. Seriously? There are 30 seats in here, 29 are available and you want to sit in the only one that's beside me? Turns out they wanted to keep seats for friends so I moved to the back row rather than make new chums. She then offered me some of her mulled wine. Pretty sure she wanted to have sex with me. By the time things kicked off we were up to an audience of about 20.
Josh Stokes was the host and did fairly well. I had seen Jordan Jensen in the past and not particularly enjoyed her but to be fair, that could have been five years ago and guess what? People can actually improve. The rest of the billed unknowns didn't amount to much and then a series of unannounced acts came on, like really quite a lot of people. I even saw Jeff Scheen (from the Beauty Bar) skulking about but he never made it to the stage. Most of these unknowns were unremarkable, though Courtney Bee was OK and Shafi Hossain had a good joke about goats. It was getting quite late and I was worried that Mark had cancelled and bizarrely been replaced by a pile of, let's say, lesser comics - quantity in place of quality. The host did explain that Mark was late and much later than the scheduled show end he finally took to the stage. It was a short, workman-like performance. I had noticed before that he doesn't like to look at anyone in the audience, so he'll just perform to an imaginary crowd in the distance. With only three rows of seats he was effectively looking over our heads and it was jarringly apparent.
Wednesday was meant to be our long overdue return to Comedians You Should Know at The Gutter in Williamsburg. However Ambush Comedy (in the slightly less salubrious setting of a pizza restaurant in the same part of town) offered a much better bill. Caitlin Peluffo, who I love, plus Khalid Rahmaan, Victor Varnado and Sam Evans were all listed and Liz Cassidy (Beauty Bar's new discovery) was hosting. We arrived a little late, got tolerable seats and turned down their (kind) offer of a free can of Miller Lite. Liz basically did the same material she had performed three days before but Sam and Khalid were excellent and Victor was fine. We sat through a few other acts, realising that Caitlin would be closing. However I saw Andrea turn up (she used to co-produce the show) plus another person who I had really struggled with 24 hours earlier at the art gallery. Accepting that we were still some way off seeing Caitlin and would definitely have to sit through the "struggle", we opted for an early exit.
Nothing else happened till Sunday when the prospect of seeing Phil Hanley, Alex Edelman and Nathan Macintosh was enough to get us reserving tickets for the Fat Black Pussycat Lounge. I've decided I'm done with the Comedy Cellar's MacDougal St and Village Underground venues but I actively enjoy the FBPC Lounge and am still opened-minded about their Bar performance space. James Mattern was the host and I won't be seeking him out anytime soon but Nathan and Alex were great, Akeem Woods was a good new name for the list and Phil Hanley was absolutely on fire! I've seen him a couple of times before but this was WAY past any previous performances. It's not exaggerating to say it was my favourite stand-up performance of the year so far. He has a special coming out shortly (I think on Youtube) which I'm certainly going to look out for.
Monday's line-up at The Stand was good again and as with the previous week, we had to decide between coughing up $15 for the 8pm or running the risk of the 10pm Frantic show. Predictably we went for the safer bet. Mark Normand was on, plus the very reliable Josh Johnson, the force of nature that is Aaron Berg, two unknowns and Janeane Garofalo who I hadn't seen for years - probably since The Stand existed in its previous location. Prior to the show being called I was waiting in the Stand's upstairs area and had time to note that the Legion of Skanks podcast that records in the second room has a VERY distinct looking fanbase, though not distinct from each other. I'm sure they're all nice chaps but there's a definite "incel" vibe about them.
Once the show went in we were OBVIOUSLY allowed to seat ourselves. Seating boy then came up to my girlfriend and very apologetically asked her to move as they had a big group to accommodate. The compere left me cold and Janeane went down fairly poorly. Mark, Aaron and Josh were predictably good which just left, as I tweeted at the time, "one of those young people who make amusing videos for the internets". To say he was having a go at standup is possibly unfair. For all I know he may have been doing it all his (short) life. However he was REALLY quite bad at it - I would realise that we'd switched subjects which would then make me try to remember where the previous topic had ended and consequently make an educated guess at where the laugh should theoretically have been. Until he gets better he's going to do dismally in front of sizeable, paying crowds instead of quietly failing at open-mics and anonymous, poorly-attended bar shows.
That should have been it for the trip but on our final night we were out locally and the chance to attend "Not Ripe Bananas", a new material night, at the West Side Comedy Club arose. On my one previous visit to this club I had been disappointed but I was aware that the management had changed and had meant to give it a second try. The NRB show, with its no cover, no drink minimum seemed to present an ideal, low cost opportunity. Tickets were bookable but there was no real organisation in place. A comedian who had yet to go up was nice enough to point us to an empty table and explain that we could either source drinks from the restaurant upstairs or order them online and a server would bring them down. Peering at my phone screen, trying not to distract the comic on stage, I couldn't work out why everything was $18. Cocktails. Wine. Even beer! Except you got two cans for $18. $9 for a can wouldn't have been the most outrageous price I've paid for a drink in a comedy club but what if I only wanted one? Or three?
The room's layout has been improved and is actually a reasonably decent space. The standard of comics varied - only Brian McFadden plus one Texan bloke whose name I missed made an impression. But I would probably return, at least for the new material night. My girlfriend pointed out that somebody, not us, but somebody could theoretically smuggle in their own booze, given that there were no staff operating in the performance room. Like I said, not us.
Trip Stats
Shows Entered - 9
Expenditure - $62
Venues new to me - 2
Single best performance - Phil "a mouth is a mouth" Hanley
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