Arts & Entertainment
The Joy Economy
How do those tiny basement comedy clubs stay afloat, when even the ten-dollar DVD meccas are closing?
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Keemo, a smooth-talking young man with a friendly smile, spends his Friday nights on the corner of West 43rd and Broadway wearing a blue shirt and yellow sign. He might ask you if you like stand-up comedy. If you say yes, he’ll whisk you three busy blocks west – dodging tourists and hurtling past the closing Virgin Megastore — before ushering you down a dingy flight of stairs under Sweet Caroline’s Dueling Pianos.
The club down there — Ha! Comedy Club NYC – is anonymous and unheralded. More importantly, it’s in a basement. One wonders: how do little places like Ha!, in such a bad time for any sort of business, stay open, when even the ten-dollar DVD meccas cannot keep up?
According to stand-up comedian and Ha performer Shawn Cornelius, the club stays afloat mostly due to its tourist-centric location (West 46th and 7th Avenue) and the efforts of guys like Keemo, who are paid to grab tourists off the streets of Times Square and fill the seats.
But comedy is also verifiably popular in times like these.
Three years ago, Cornelius quit his day job as a mentor to focus on comedy full time. He usually found work around this time at ski resorts, but thanks to the souring economy, fewer people are taking trips, and the pay dwindled. But his regular comedy gigs, for college performances and clubs, weren’t affected.
“People are gonna come out and laugh,” Cornelius said. “We laugh at stuff like this, you know, we laugh at the economy. “We as comedians, it’s our duty to keep things going.”
History seems to support theory of comedy thriving amid economic crisis. Over 300 comedy clubs opened across the country between 1978 and 1988, and the number of stand-up comedians rose. Wall Street was devastated after October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 22.6 percent, the second largest one-day percentage decline in U.S. stock market history. But subsequent New York Times headlines, such as “Market for Humor Still Bullish” (1987) and “Laughter: the Best Medicine for Stress” (1989) suggest that the humor business was relatively stable.
Stand-up comedian Liz Miele pointed out that comics have always been good at making fun of finances.
“We all have our struggling artist jokes,” Miele said. “What I ask [audience members] is, ‘what do you do?’ I would say that at least a third of the audience is unemployed. They’re in between jobs; they are bartending now when they didn’t before.”
Miele works part-time as a nanny and still comes up short on rent. She plans to move to a cheaper apartment, a goal that conflicts with her desire to quit the nannying job.
“With the economy…it’s actually a scary time to let go of that safety net,” Miele said.
Lee Camp, a stand-up comedian and writer who recently appeared on the PBS series “Make ‘Em Laugh: America’s Funny Business,” might recommend she hang on to it. Camp quit his day job about five years ago. Now, the college performances he relies upon are threatened by university budget cuts.
“If you have a secondary job, then I think it’s a fine time [to be a comedian]. But in terms of throwing off the second job and giving it a go, I would imagine it would be difficult,” Camp said. “Clubs are falling back on comedians that they know can fill the room, and obviously a newcomer can’t do that.”
He added, “It’s a very tough time for me, and I’ve been making a living at it for five years.”
Kevin Carolan, a performer since 1993, thinks comedy will continue to thrive, because a night in a comedy club is still a relatively inexpensive way to spend an evening.
“If things get slow enough, a club could cut back on its number of shows, and that will trickle down some hurt to the comics that have to fight for less slots,” he said. “But that’s on a smaller, local level. Bookers will be the ones responsible for filling the bigger clubs, and I don’t think that’ll slow down too much.”
Laura Newmark, a comedy talent manager with the New York City-based Beatrix Klein Management, confirmed that bookers are looking for well-known talent to draw crowds.
“If you don’t have a fan base, they don’t really want you,” Miele said of the bigger clubs. “They want somebody who can put people in the seats. Our business, for club owners, is about alcohol. It’s not about comedy.”
Though recession has hit Illinois especially hard, Cate Freedman, an improvisational and sketch comic who performs at Second City and Improv Olympics in Chicago, said Second City’s comedy conservatory continues to flourish. The conservatory started with one classroom behind the theater and now occupies several floors in an adjacent building.
Facebook, MySpace and YouTube have also become new outlets for humor, and marketing tools for comedians, who can book themselves into shows if they can parlay online success into a club-going, drink-buying fan base.
“People aren’t going to sit by their TVs all day,” Camp said. “As long as you’re still in your house, you’re not truly free of your daily grind, your fears of unemployment, your fears of the mortgage. So a bad economy could actually create a resurgence for live comedy.”
Comedian Lee Camp still has his gigs -- though no one is counting on anything.
Photo courtesy of Lee Camp