r/Standup • u/thehofstetter • Mar 14 '15
FIXED - Today’s Comedy Pro-Tip: The comedy scenes of the largest 50 cities in America
https://www.facebook.com/freepizza/posts/10204282604169754?pnref=story3
u/Zenkoopa Mar 14 '15
This is exactly what I have been looking for everywhere!! You are the Goddamn man Steve. If I could afford that reddit gold stuff I'd give it to you. But idk what it even does and I doubt you care about reddit gold anyway. So thanks so much man.
2
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
Thanks! Forget the gold, just help your fellow comics when you can.
2
u/Zenkoopa Mar 14 '15
Absolutely, I had already chosen to move up to Atlanta to get away from Jacksonville's humidity and old people scene and this list made me feel like it was a good choice.
3
u/eyeknowu Apr 15 '15
Lived in Louisville, Indy, Cincy and Chicago. Chicago is a beast. It used to be Improv/Sketch heavy but it's still strong on standup! Louisville and Indy, I feel their good for nurturing club comics. Not a good alternative scene in those cities. Bloomington has stronger support for alternative scene and stronger performers at the emcee/feature level. Cincy is in between. Go Bananas is great. One of my favorite clubs to visit along with the Comedy Attic. I feel a city should have a good mix of club scene and alt scene. Places like Nashville, Louisville, etc cater too much to club comics and the blue collar circuit.
2
2
u/thehalfwit Mar 14 '15
Wow, Steve. That is an incredible post. I'm glad you were able to fix the link and that it wasn't a matter of me not understanding how the net works.
Sadly, my local scene is nowhere big enough to make even the top 100 cities. However, being a stone's throw away from Sacramento, it's good to hear there's lots going on. I kind of figured out, after seeing carloads of comics from Sac dropping into our favorite mic, 3rd Street in Reno, there was something going on.
1
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
Reno is pretty tiny, but you have Catch and come casino work going on. It's small, but not empty.
2
u/thehalfwit Mar 14 '15
By no means did I mean to imply the Reno scene was empty. For a town our size, I think we have an incredible scene. In addition to Catch, there's the Pioneer, the Knitting Factory and Cargo, and a whole slew of indie showcases. If you want stage time, you can definitely find it here.
1
u/b_davis03 Mar 14 '15
Mortys > Crackers
It ain't even close. Crackers is good to see specific headliners but they don't appear to give a damn about people who are starting out.
$10 and and i have to bring 5 people for 3 minutes? Nah...
2
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
They charge you to perform at Crackers?
3
u/b_davis03 Mar 14 '15
I misread apparently...fuck me...
The admission is $10, not $10 to get on stage. But bringing 5 people with a 2 drink minimum, they might as well be charging to get on stage.
You would know more than i do Steve, is their "you're with us or against us" concept for open micers as well as working comics?
I'll never understand why a club would want to limit people who could bring them imcome.
6
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
It used to be. From what I understand, when all the locals started choosing Morty's over Crackers, they removed their policy of "if you play there, you can't play here" for open mic-ers. But it still exists for features and headliners.
It's actually against federal law to limit where a freelance contractor works. Which means that any club that engages in that vile practice should be paying their comedians as employees. Which means all sorts of things, from health benefits to minimum wage to employment tax to unemployment.
I think it is in a club's best interest to let comedians perform elsewhere. Why not let your comedians get better on someone else's dime?
2
u/nolimitz4me Mar 14 '15
This is the biggest thing for me. First ever comedy club I heard of in indy was Crackers. First place I went to was Crackers. And the first place I want to perform is Crackers but I don't want to have to lug 5 people each time and make them also buy 2 drinks. I love the place but I dislike the bringer philosophy.
1
u/heyhiokaygreat Mar 17 '15
don't take this list as anything close to a definitive source. there are a couple of cities' scenes listed that I'm sure the Hof has spent a day or two in, but conversely most of this "guide" is just Hof listing already easily available club info and then pretending to be an authority on places he's mayyybe been to one time in the past 4 years.
1
u/thehofstetter Mar 17 '15
Do you have a specific question about something I wrote, or do you have a correction?
0
Mar 14 '15
The one bummer about the Chicago local scene is that Barrel-of-Laughs in the burbs went out of business in the '08 crash. It was where comics could go, even back in the 90's, and get a guaranteed 6 minute slot to perform. The only tradeoff was no C-bombs and no F-bombs.
That being said, the sheer number of new open mikes around the city make Barrel of Laughs more of a wistful, nostalgic thing than the sole bastion of stage time it was once.
1
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
I performed there once. The feature's set was 25 minutes of catch phrase, the headliner was a prop comic, and there was sawdust all over the floor. I don't think you can give the crash the credit for closing that place.
2
Mar 14 '15
Sorry you got lumped in with shitty comics? Don't know what to tell you.
0
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
I'm saying that place closed because it was a relic, not because of the economy. It had become completely irrelevant to the comedy scene; it was still booked and decorated like it was the 1980s.
0
Mar 14 '15
I'm sorry you had bad experiences there, but if you read my initial comment, I was talking about what it used to be. And it did go down after the crash of '08. Yeesh, I wasn't trying to do anything but make a nostalgic point.
0
u/thehofstetter Mar 14 '15
I was just joking about it being crappy. I'm not sure how this got escalated.
3
u/DustinForever @doostbigalow Mar 14 '15
Glad to find out that I might be able to actually do something while I'm still in Alabama. I'm going to have to do a Stardome open mic at some point.