Free Blue Speech

photo by Shani Hadjian

To learn standup in New York City is to take a bath in free speech. The water is usually a little rancid, but that’s the beauty.

Anyone can join an open mic, from morning to night, across all five boroughs. Check out a basic schedule here. If you’ve never been to an open mic, let me paint a picture. Imagine a barnyard with broken pens, where the animals mingle. Chickens poop everywhere. Goats have relations with the sheep, and vice versa.

I’ve been to several where some rando wanders off the street, pays $5 to get on stage, and then does. Once I watched as a gentleman with an Eastern European accent stumbled into an East Village club wearing a shabby suit. 

“Is this the open mic?” he asked the confused 20-something host.

“Yes,” she said. 

The man then got up on stage and did a hilarious impression of Donald Trump talking to Richard Nixon. He did both parts and was weirdly brilliant. We applauded hesitantly at first. What was that? Then the man disappeared, like some dark angel.

Another time, I saw a comic get up on stage so drunk we all gasped when he got too close to the lip of the stage. But that didn’t stop him from taking swigs from the bottle in his pocket.

I like the mics at the Producers Club, a collection of rooms above 44th Street, just west enough from Broadway to be charmingly seedy. You can climb the steps at 5:30PM for the 5PM mic, and the host will say, “You want to come in for the 5PM mic?” 

Night clubs are sticklers for time, but it’s sometimes their own version of time. 

There’s always a mic going on, the wheel of the First Amendment in constant rotation.

Most are in bars afterhours, when normal people are doing something else. The decor is often brothel-meets-Elks Lodge. 

Then there’s the basements – St. Mark’s Comedy Club, for instance. 

There’s something about practicing in the darkness, often underground.Lenny Bruce (and Bob Dylan) entertained in Café Wha? on MacDougal Street. Musicians often mingled with the comics, lending a certain music to the spoken word.

People do get sidelined for bad behavior. Once a guy wouldn’t leave the stage until I looked at him when he said the word “pussy.” To my amazement, all the other male comics yelled at him to get off the stage. The host reached out later to let me know the heckler had been banned for two weeks.

Yes, all of this was jarring, but you know what I realized? I had the power to walk away, just like comedian Judy Gold talks about in her book: Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble.

One of my comedy mentors talks about developing grace for new material. We’re trying to be funny, but you have to dig deep to tell the jokes only you can tell. It’s like writing poetry but so much less forgiving.

Standup is counterintuitive to the way I was brought up, which is not to stand out.

Yet, it’s the most American way I can practice being American right now. It’s like getting inside this country’s actual heartbeat. 

I have the luxurious freedom to pursue failure.