New Jersey Day 1 - Diners, Fairies, and Excellent Crowd Work
Today was my first full day in Jersey. I was mostly in North Jersey today, so I was very surprised at how idyllic and green everything was and not riddled with big mobsters.
I got my coffee at Rock 'N' Joe because I had to. It's a local chain, but really cool. The coffee's very good and they have a large selection of specialty flavored coffees. There's also good vaguely rock and roll themed hangout place vibe, which I quite liked.
Energized by the power of rock and roll, I hiked the South Mountain Fairy Trail. This is a trail in the South Mountain Reservation state park, that has tons of tiny houses where "Fairies" live. It was pure whimsy. Some of them weren't all too creative but some were genuine works of art. Either way it was a great excuse to go get some exercise, and instill some wonder in your life.
After hiking I went to my first Diner of the day to ruin that exercise. I've been told that diners are an important New Jersey tradition, so I went to the oldest one in the state, Summit Diner. It's a no frills old-fashioned diner cart. It's cash only, and there isn't a huge selection but everything is good. I got the chicken parm lunch special, which included an absolutely massive sandwich, soup and fries. All were immaculate and it was fun place to be. One other customer accidentally got a hot dog bun with no hot dog in it, but everyone just laughed about it.
After that I met my friend, Julia (another college standup), at the Rockaway Mall. We made of fun of weird clothes at h&m, which isn't a strictly regional activity but I recommend it. Just look at this:
We went to diner #2, Jefferson Diner. Dinner was less of a sweet deal than lunch, but still really good. I got a chicken and spinach wrap, and Julia got a gigantic philly cheese steak. I also got a brown ale from Dark Street Brewing in Asbury Park which was very tasty and packed a bunch of flavor.
Next up was the Open mic. 10th Street Live was a hugely pleasant surprise. It's tucked away in the middle of a residential area so it's totally unassuming, but it turned out to be a really hip bar. We got there kinda early so I assumed it wouldn't be much of a crowd. I continued to be pleasantly surprised as a Cool crowd started to come in closer to the mic. The patrons were Young, diverse, and wearing lots of dorky t shirts. They seemed pretty liberal leaning and pretty intellectual based on conversations throughout the night. Normally Monday night football can be a bit of distraction from comedy nights, but because of the mess with protests and presidential tweets it actually supplied a lot of comedic fodder and audience engagement. At the beginning of the night when one team entirely knelt during the anthem including the mangers, everyone in the bar clapped and it was a powerful moment. If anything this protesting fills me with more pride in this country, but I was glad that the comics really tried to engage with the issues in a pretty even handed way.
In fact a few comics got weirdly discursive. They delivered sets that weren't super funny, but more trying to grapple with difficult issues in an interesting way. I haven't seen that much before, but people went along with it and there was a lot of questioning, pushing back, and general fun interplay between the crowd and the comics.
Crowd work and riffing was definitely a big theme of the night. There were more comics at this mic than any that I've been to so far. I'm sure being close to New York just creates a huge pool of aspiring comics, that other states might not have. In general with that many comics you get a more mixed bag, which is understandable, but for the most part the night was pretty strong. People's prepared jokes that they were trying out didn't always land, but you could tell they were actually good comics because of their delivery and the way they would riff and recover from the flat joke.
I think a big reason this mic was so fun, and that comics felt so comfortable was the host, Gordon Baker-Bone. He was easily the funniest comic of the night, but he was also just a ball of energy and so quick on his feet. Something I've never seen at any mic before was that he had his own microphone the whole time. I could see how maybe the idea of the host interrupting a set could seem stressful or rude, but Gordon had a real knack for it. Comics could play off him if they were struggling, and he helped bring out the best in a lot of sets. He also called people out if they said things that crossed a line which I thought was really cool. One guy was doing basically doing an entire set about hitting women (yikes, right?) but Gordon just interrupted him and asked, "Just out of curiosity, is this whole set going to be about to about domestic abuse?" I think it's a good way to handle something like that, because it's a light touch but it gives the comic an out to get out of bad territory while also establishing that the room at large doesn't think it's okay to hit women. His own sets at the beginning and end of the night were also killer, and my favorite joke of his was "Our generation is strange like we finally got self driving cars, but then you look out the window and there's still a nazi"
Favorite joke of the night: (unfortunately didn't catch this comic's name) I think the Kardashians were brought in for the same reason as crack, to destabilize the lives of successful black men.
My own set was fun, and probably the loosest I've ever done. I ended up doing the sillier, dirtier jokes that have been going well in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and they still landed pretty well but I wish I had done some more social commentary stuff because this crowd seemed like they would have been receptive to it. It was pretty late when I went up though, so I felt like keeping things light. I also went on pretty soon after the guy who did the hitting women set, so I was a little incensed and made a joke about how rough that content was to (hopefully) clear some air in the room. This led to me somehow riffing with Gordon about Public Enemy and how the whitest thing I have ever done was botching a fist bump with Flavor Flav when I went to see them live (I grabbed the fist like a hand shake, I am filled with shame). I had forgotten about that, but it went over okay so I might try to work something out there, and it was just fun to feel that comfortable on stage.
Favorite Random Sightings: Cluck U: University Chicken; Good Guy Vapes; The Committed Pig; Tips out For Harmbe Tip jar
Regional Observation: Jersey has full service gas stations, which make me feel odd. I read online that it's not expected to tip gas station attendants. That feels wrong to me, but I don't want to be rude. Is that real?
Albums Listened to It: Cruising with Reuben and the Jets by Frank Zappa (not Frankie Valli but it was fun to start the day with some weird doo-wop); Cut the Crap by the Clash (Just This is England); Czarface by Czarface (a rapper/producer pair from Boston teamed up with Inspector Deck from the Wu-Tang Clan, and all three of their albums are a lot of fun); DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar; Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks Featuring an All Star Cast of Friends by Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks (big changeup from Kendrick)
People's Favorite Jokes:
What did the beaver say when it walked into a wall? Dam
What did the hipster say to the bouncer when he got kicked out of the club? Nah, I'm a-stay (said quickly like Namaste some jokes are hard to translate into writing)
Why did the hipster burn his mouth on the pizza? He ate it before it was cool
Song of the Day:
