hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler today I'm here with my very good friend gnome dwarman in comedy seller gnome is owner I'm Presario and CEO of Comedy seller three places in New York one in Las Vegas commonly considered America's leading Comedy Club gnome welcome well Tyler thank you very much for having me what is the perfect room temperature for comedy Ah that's a great question um the originator of the comedy seller
named Bill grunfest this was a very important issue for him he felt that uh if it got warm this was a had a serious effect on how the comedians went over I think a little bit colder than comfortable is what is best 70 maybe something like
that so it's like how stores often feel people buy more when it's cold yeah the problem is that the the the kind of air conditioning systems that we have you take you take what you can get you know in a very very hot day they
underperform and and then the thermostat says you know they're slow they don't keep things at a perfect temperature so it hovers up and down around things but we try to keep it cool what's the biggest thing about audiences laughing at comedy that you do not understand well what's interesting is always that the entire audience or most of the audience at the same instant in time seems to react the same way to know whether something is funny in a
way that nobody can explain and this will happen even if it's the same comedian telling the same joke four days in a row I will find my and I will find myself laughing harder at at the same joke just was as the entire room is laughing harder but I could go to the video and it's very difficult to pinpoint what he's doing differently but there's something on a micro level that they do differently and everybody perceives it the same way at the same
time and it's that's the magic of it all I don't know if that's a direct answer to your question but that's what it makes me think of I don't know how to explain that and there's something about human synchronization of the audience in there
if you have to extrapolate that to broader social situations what do you conclude people pick up on very slight cues in an instinctual level kind of analogous to pheromones I guess that they can't account for they don't know
they're doing it probably affects who seems like a likable person and unlikely who you trust I mean there's a million different ways these things uh present themselves but it's real it's very real and and I would say some people are kind of oblivious to these Clues and they probably suffer for that during their lives as well Circa 2023 can comedy still shock us so simply using the f word trying to be like Lenny Bruce it's all a big bore
right is there shock value left in comedy uh not funny shock value uh um I mean at some point I've I've been expecting that somebody will Channel Lenny Bruce and start defiantly using the n-word again or something like that to make a a deep point and at some point may get away with it but um no usually things that are shocking now or trite and uh not that funny a reader suggests to me that people don't tell jokes very much anymore but
they watch YouTube or Tick Tock for humor how does that affect comedians um but what that makes me think of is that at some point comedians started referring to their bits as jokes and that happened you know and gradually
and I remember waking up and realizing well that's not what a joke is a joke is a setup and a punch line the joke isn't one of your like descriptions that is a funny thing and yet that's right there's the the kind of set up punchline of joke
is rare old people do them sometimes but it's what's considered jokes today are comedy bits and people don't tell each other comedy bits so I think you're right fewer and fewer people tell each other jokes why aren't jokes funny anymore like I don't ever want to hear jokes if someone walked into the room sat at the table I'm going to tell you a joke I'd be like tune out or maybe this is anthropologically interesting but funny is the last thing
I would expect from that no well you know I I travel in different circles and you do a lot of comedians at the table will tell jokes and and these guys are very good at telling them sometimes so I I enjoy jokes my father told a million jokes they were funny to me so I I you know but in in your uh you know Egghead circles maybe I think a good joke tellers I don't know how social media changed comedy well it's changed it came to the rescue in in
a certain way because um just as wokeness put a cloud over everything social media allowed some of the most successful Comics working today to uh distribute themselves directly to Their audience and find Their audience
and I think even this includes even Joe Rogan to some extent and there's no Gatekeepers anymore people like Andrew Schultz and Chris Stefano and Tim Dylan so uh it's given comedy a Lifeline in a certain way um it's changed everything not just
comedy but our business I mean like years ago I had a music club that was hugely successful the cafe Huawei lines around the block to get in it was a huge like local New York thing if we'd had social media I mean this the sky would have been the limit so I mean we used to have to stamp postcards if we had an event and send out 100 it was expensive and now you can announce something to a billion people so it's rippled through
everything including the ability of comedians to present themselves directly to the audience in a very meritocratic way you know you can't argue so much with who Rises to the top when people are forwarding things they find funny
but say in the NBA some people charge well dunks layups spectacular three-point shots have replaced watching actual games you just pull out bits and you watch highlights is comedy becoming just a thing of highlights and is that
in the longer run good for comedy bad for comedy well it's taking everybody's attention span uh on everything right yeah I would say it has been it has done that although you know our club has always been a showcase Club as opposed to a headlining Club so we've always opted for shorter bits uh I've always found it hard to sit through an hour of somebody's comedy unless it was you know a classic Richard Pryor thing like that but I think you're
right I mean I'm overthinking it yes everybody's attention span is shorter and everything and that's forced comedians well you know what having said that still the the real Kings like Louis CK and Chappelle and Chris Rock they really still do take their time with their bits they spin out long things and they're still on top they really are but they're the geniuses if you take a top YouTuber and put that person on stage at a comedy club like
the comedy seller how does that person fare very badly why what's the difference it goes back to what we were talking about before it's not as easy as it looks when Twitter first started there was a very famous Tweeter I can remember
his name now he had you know a huge number of followings for that era and he was funny he was very funny on Twitter and he would do some shows and it was just tumbleweeds and you know crickets just crickets um it's just it's
it's not that easy there's a timing there's a Charisma there's a but isn't YouTube harder in a way because you've got to pretend there's a live audience there so it takes all the more effort energy dynamism is it that they overshoot or that they come off flat what exactly happens I think YouTube is just different and um I wouldn't I've never done it I don't know that it's harder or easier but I know that there are certain people who
just can fill a room and have again an example like Chappelle he he has a talent he can just talk for three hours doesn't have to be hitting punch lines and people will just sit there and listen to him it's Meg it's hypnotic
he's magnetic I can't account for that it wouldn't work on YouTube I don't think anybody's sitting watching on you and like the only other person I know who has that is maybe like Howard Stern somehow he can just talk and talk and
talk and people will listen and it's just a different talent I think on Twitter why artists Ordinary People so often funnier than the comedians well that's a great question because this this you know this frustrates Comics no
end and they won't talk about it so for instance I'm pretty funny uh if I'm at the comedian table and I say something that's funny there's a large number of comedians who will not laugh because it makes them uncomfortable to see a civilian be funny
because you're a civilian you're you're the boss well the boss but a civilian sense that you know I'm not supposed to be the talent um uh but a lot of people are extremely funny in person as funny as stand-up comics what they what they don't have is whatever it is that's driving stand up well they might have a few things they're not comfortable on stage they may not be charismatic and they're not compelled to be in front of an audience
getting laughs this is something The Comedians love my father used to talk about it they want to be on stage they want to be the center of attention it's not just about being funny I it there's a there's a need that they have for this that the average funny person doesn't have I can be funny I'm not I don't want I don't have the urge to be on stage being funny matter of fact I'm scared of that but I don't follow any Comedians and I sit
there I read Twitter and I giggle so there's maybe a person who's funny once every four years but the funniest thing they say becomes viral on Twitter how do comedians compete against hundreds of millions of people who are mostly
unfunny but they have one funny moment every now and then and then it gets elevated to the top yeah you're asking me questions about things that I've actually thought about even recently I don't know the answer to that um but so I
exactly I've been wondering like how is it that some of these comedy seller comedians are on top even though they're not actually funnier and especially since you're only getting the cream of the crop of these tweets
but I guess somehow they are that's all I can tell you is somehow uh people who are who are at the top of this field now there's a lot of overachievers in this profession it's not like the NBA if you want to be in the NBA you got to be
in the top one tenth of basketball players in the country or it's immediately obvious but you can scratch out and work hard and put together a good 15 minutes so there are a lot of overachievers working in comedy but the real super talents the real the real gems like the Chappelle's like the Louis CK's they really are on another level and it the world sees that I I don't know if that's a good answer or not why are there so few great comedy movies
today and TV shows for that matter it used to be top TV shows War comedies not all of them Seinfeld the clearest example and now for a long time HBO dramas what happened well I mean the the obvious answer that would most people would say is that because you can make those jokes anymore and and most of the classic uh comedies had Jokes which would be considered off limits today but if they're not mostly that Politically Incorrect like Seinfeld
This less Politically Incorrect than Curb Your Enthusiasm but there's not a Seinfeld of today is there at movies you can go pretty far out and most of the funny movies from the past like bringing a baby it's pretty funny it's not politically
incorrect at all it's coming around that kind of Comedy but I don't know Tyler you have a thought on that we seem to be getting funny bits in different ways and they're more condensed and they come at a higher
information density and we can pull them off the internet or Tick Tock whenever we want and it seems that Sates us and we enjoy the feeling of control over comedy which you don't quite get when you're watching say a hundred minute
film that would be my hypothesis does that mean that there's movies that have been made which are funny and does and would deserve the success of a classic comedy they're just not getting appreciated no they don't get made they
don't get made at all maybe some of them made for TV but even there it all seems less funny to me but it could also be audiences are themselves less funny right they're more depressed they're more neurotic we see some of that in the data at least for young people so I suspect that's not the main reason but part of it I don't know and you know sometimes there isn't a reason sometimes there's just a Golden Age there's a period where
like let's let's compare it to music why is music a little bit stagnant now maybe that's just the ebb and flow of of where it's at and and we're trying to correlate it to something but it has nothing to do with that maybe this just
the great talents are doing other things now or a lot of the jokes have been told I don't know but there's definitely Golden Ages of every art form but comedy's still in a kind of golden age but that's not in movies but not
movies but not in movies how do you think it changed comedy to be moved away from General Outlets so it used to be there'd be a Vaudeville show you would see something on a showboat in a saloon a circus and parts of it would
be funny but sometimes you'd just be watching the dancing bear whereas now today people go to a comedy club in capital letters did that Evolution matter yeah I don't I don't think it's better I think um I know that a lot of comedians became
a little snobby about that um so for instance in the village underground we have a band that brings the comedians up on and off the stage I don't know if you've been seated on the ground I think no not yet and uh when I first introduced it I really introduced it because I had to let some musicians go when I was changing the club over to so I tried to include them um and related to what you're saying the black Comics who are used who came up in
much more raucous rooms and rooms which were not dedicated they immediately embraced this they liked it they liked the energy the more clever you know white Comics like clevers and scare quotes um we're very resistant to it at first because this was not purest uh in retrospect most of them have come to me and said no I was wrong the music is great and even we even allow the band a little feature thing so I think it's uh not an improvement
I think that a mix a mix of things is better catch a rising star which was considered to be the greatest of the New York comedy clubs back in the 80s they actually did have music acts and The Improv had music acts at one time so
now it's true that if it's two if it's too much it can be difficult to settle the room back down to Comedy so there are practical reasons but I think in general this kind of snobbery of of the art form as opposed to just being
entertaining to an audience I'm on the side of entertainment I would I would love to see a Vaudeville show here's a very difficult question that I've never heard a really good answer to Is you take broadly American Comedy and then broadly British comedy and you had to boil down the difference to a smaller number of Dimensions as possible what would that be hide on you're laughing at me but I'm not funny I'm I'm laughing at you
because you should be because you know more about this and I no I don't you have British comics in right yeah we have British comics and they're less politically correct they're they're more word oriented um like Jimmy Carr um
uh but I don't I don't know the difference between British stand-up comedy I'm I don't know enough about it like I would I would assume it's similar difference between like Monty Python movies and Caddyshack you know that there's just a different
sensibility about it um but the the British Comics that I see are a self-selected bunch of comedians who come together for America yes and and for the comedy so they're friends of Louie they're friends of somebody you know somehow they've gotten in the door and they've decided for themselves that that this is a good audience for them uh so I don't know the answer but I enjoy British comedy I think if the Americans as more explicitly presenting
themselves in your face as entertainers and the British Comics start off by positioning sort of their class relative to yours in some way that's one of the fundamental differences so like when Ricky Gervais did those famous was it
the Golden Globes or whatever it is right like was that particularly British would you say was there something about that that an American comic wouldn't have done I didn't see it I didn't see it it's so funny I mean just eviscerated
everybody you know I don't know if that's because he had more felt more latitude because he's not from the countries British whatever it is but uh it seemed different than an American comic would have done it was different than the way Michelle wolf tried to do the same thing for the for the correspondence dinner if I think of the earlier history of Comedy I see a lot of Comedy double acts Laurel and Hardy George and Gracie
Aberdeen Costello Burns and Allen those have mostly vanished what happened is the straight man or woman out of fashion are they too is it too slow when you have two people and we need this higher information density of Comedy
I I don't know I think the the uh well like those acts came up not in comedy rooms as you say usually they'd be part of a bill sometimes one of them sang but they would do radio plays so they had to be able to do a a a plot on a
maybe I'm trying to think of reasons why like you know it would be that we've we've had some comedy Duos over the year at the over the years of the comedy seller very few some of them were very funny but they eventually went there
separate ways from each other um I think the the vehicles that are uh being used now are just are just not conducive to a comedy team like they once were is it Simon and Garfunkel problem like someone thinks he's too good for the group
well that's what happened with uh Jerry Lewis right and Dean Martin yes I remember my father telling me nobody thought Dean Martin would last like everybody assumed you but it turned out you did yeah I'm sure I'm sure there's I I don't know if there's a rule of thumb everything every one of these scenarios might be unique in its own way but definitely the idea that the radio was a central way of presenting things in those days I think
that probably uh dictated that a Duo was a smart thing to have because you wanted to have a conversation on the radio and a plot Avenue Costello had plots right right and they were in movies with plots yet who's the oldest comedian oldest in the
sense of going back in history that you can watch today on YouTube or listen to and still laugh um it's funny comedy doesn't age well right it's not like me right it's it's amazing how it doesn't age well um
I find all Don Rickles still funny sometimes um but I find all George Carlin I will still find like the class clown album funny I thought that the Judd Apatow documentary had a lot of footage of Colin back in the 60s I still found that
funny but Cheech and Chong like they're not funny anymore right I haven't listened to it since I was in high school but I probably know because all the weed jokes and whatever no they seem very very dated you would have to Jack
Benny is he still funny yeah I think I think Jack Benny is still funny um I've seen some but again that's mostly he's still funny in some of the old clips I haven't heard Jack Benny's stand up Bob Hope is not still funny no I don't remember thinking Bob Hope was funny even when I was a kid who is this guy Woody Allen Woody old Woody Allen stand up is funny for sure uh I I played some old Bill Cosby stuff for my kids I think this was before Bill
Cosby went out of fashion uh and they loved it but they now we loved Bill Cosby as kids I don't know if you're kind to me it was never funny it was too boring mainstream and you know my my dad used to always tell me Bill Cosby is a creep and he would say you know someday you'll agree with me that's amazing how did he know he said there were two people he he would say they were creeps Bill Cosby and Woody Allen he had a remarkable
intuition for human character well this goes back to what we were talking about the beginning about these cues that's right it's amazing and he never met either one of course no he didn't say anything about 100 other people right no
no those were the two that he singled out and demonized that's remarkable yeah Bob Newhart was he funny it's so low-key to me I tried listening to some to prep for this conversation I said you know it's like funny for square
people in 1963 or something to me it wasn't funny no I would I would I don't find it that funny I went back and not so long ago listened and watched the Richard Pryor movie where he does uh the monkey and Leon Spinks and that stuff and I still found that funny um but it's rare comedy does not age well and uh I don't know well I will tell you this it's not stand-up comedy but chaplain because we play Chaplin all the time in the restaurant right
there are nights when the entire restaurant will be laughing at Chaplin it still captivates me I'm not sure I'm laughing but it's very powerful I think to this day and the end of City Lights where you know he holds her hand and he
realizes and she realizes that he's he's a homeless guy or a bum but she thought he was this rich man and like trying to encapsulate him it's too complicated but anyway and you'll see multiple people with tears in their eyes at the end of
this chaplain movie in the restaurant and what accounts for that in your view genius there's no other I mean he was pretty strand Europe and America right he was not quite at home anywhere Outsider a little [ __ ]
Refugee I don't know but but he's the only we've tried Buster Keaton we've tried Laurel and Hardy you know they did a lot of silent movies before they did talking we've tried every uh we tried all we tried sampling all the greats of the silent era
and none of them seem to attract attention from the the patrons other than chaplain also you know he's acrobatic there's roller skating scenes and boxing scenes and trapeze scenes and amazing stuff WC Fields the bank dick I
thought still was funny yeah WC Fields is funny and way ahead of his time and actually I named well I didn't it wasn't my idea but the name Fat Black Pussycat which is one of our uh rooms is named after the bar in the movie Bank dick all
I think it might just be called The Fat Cat in in that movie and what about comedy across borders forget about the anglosphere Brits are funny Canadians of course funny but people from Israel France wherever Germany if comedy doesn't age well across time how does how it does it for you age across borders apparently people like American Comedy all over the world Americans are not so keen on comedians from other countries that's that's it
when we have comedians come here from other countries I don't think anybody's done that well Gad elmala did pretty well for a while and they're too culturally specific or they're just not funny or how do you account for the difference
it has something to do with the the uh the power of American culture like you know American culture is has been integrated by all the other countries in the world somehow they've just grown up they get it they get they
get us we don't get them that's that's my best guess at it but you think they're quite funny for their local audiences they clearly are yeah yeah they clearly are now for how many years have you been running the club since uh 2003 is that
30 years over those years across time do comedians to you are they nicer are they meaner like how have they changed as a group or class of people and none of them will be listening to this podcast so you can say what you
really think how have they changed have they changed they're more aggressive they're quieter they are they are less aggressive they are more careful they're less broey you know which which is um considered a bad thing but the Bros were fun you know there was a there was a raucous kind of bro atmosphere like the Bill Burr types now Bill a lot of these people there are famous now but they're grandfathered in um but a young Bill Burr
would have a tough time people look like dudes you need to chill out you can't say that stuff anymore you know so those people are they've changed in that way but um but in many ways they're the same they're still smarter than most people
they're still uh less easy to offend they're still much better company they they still uh you know much better conversations much less boring Small Talk there's a comedians only like to hang out with comedians for these
reasons and they die a thousand deaths when they have to go to a dinner with people who are not comedians they really don't like it because they cut out all the all the nonsense and they're very very honest and very very direct it's coming to me as I'm answering you they'll they'll share very personal details with each other in a way that most people won't even people they don't even know that well this is just part of their culture and
part of their ethic to be very very honest and that's a very kind of captivating conversation to be in how often do they marry each other um not that often don't they end up unhappy then well there's like Tom Papa
is married to his wife Cynthia and um they're married for a long time and very happy uh there's some couples they usually break up listen comedians it's not about marrying other female communities male comedians are notoriously bad at love
why is that one might say is because there a lot of them are damaged in some way and that's what makes them funny uh it could be the lifestyle um I don't know but the you know they're not like my law school friends who are all happily married when you know for a long time with children The Comedians uh uh they have they get divorced a lot or they don't get married at all so as a group of people you think they're less happy than say your lawyer
friends less happy that's a good question I think there's a lot of depression there's a lot of uh psychotropic drugs is that the phrase you know a lot a lot of mood uh drugs being taken by comedians but if you read the papers this is common throughout American culture so I don't know if it's more or they're just again more open about it because comedians will tell you I'm taking this I'm taking that um I would have to say they're not less
happy because they love their work and they can't wait to go to work and like my father used to tell me most people live their whole lives for the weekend they can't stand going to work and and those people I have trouble
believing are happier than comedians because anybody and I have a job similar to this where my whole profession is on my own terms if I'm interested in computers I can make that work for my profession my music whatever it was I wanted to do
this is happiness you know so unless they are you know chemically depressed people as some people are I think comedians are probably happier than most people if there's a truly beautiful woman can she do stand-up comedy or are the looks an obstacle oh yeah absolutely Whitney Cummings is very very funny I think she's beautiful she was a model um I know what you're saying um but I I I don't think it's an obstacle I don't think it would
be an obstacle yes it's true there haven't been that many truly beautiful women doing stand-up comedy I would not say that that's the reason does the comedy have to change um it might you know I I think so much of this defies these rules of thumb and I think that when somebody comes along who has something original about them something about their take on things something about the way they speak whatever it is and it's real they will become big
regardless of what it is it again it's like you know somebody with a super musical Talent like Django Reinhardt they're missing fingers they figure out how to play with their their toes when you have real talent you will make it
the problem is always that that's the the top you know the five percent whatever you want to say and then there is the more mediocre category of people who are successful in stand-up comedy and in that group then yeah then you
could maybe attribute these kind of things that you're talking about but among the people with super talent I don't think it matters what they look like I don't think any of these things hold them back and if you do stand-up
comedy for decades yeah at a high level but not the Louis CK Chris Rock level but you're successful you know you appear in your Club all the time how does that change a person but not so famous that everyone on the street knows who they are
how does doing stand-up comedy change a person for 25 years yeah um well it first of all it it makes it harder for them to socialize like I hear the story also about comedians when they go like Thanksgiving dinner with their family and all sudden the entire Place gets silent like did he just say because you get used to being in an atmosphere where you could say whatever you want um I think probably because I know this in my life and again the
getting used to essentially being Your Own Boss you get used to that and then it just becomes very very hard to ever consider going back into kind of like the structured life that most people expect is going to be their lives from
the time they're in school you know nine to five whatever it is so at some point I think if you do it for too long you would probably kill yourself rather than go back I've had that thought to myself like if I if I had to go back to like I
never practiced slow but if I had to take a job as a lawyer and I'm not just saying this to be dramatic I think I might kill myself I can't even imagine at my age having to start going to work at nine o'clock having a boss having to answer for mistakes that I made having the pressure of having to get it right otherwise somebody's life is impacted I just got too used to being able to do what I want when I want to do comedians have to get gigs but
essentially they can do what they want when they want to do it they don't have to get up in the morning and I think at some point you just become so used to that there's no going back I've known a few people who casually
they're not Comics but they do improv comedy at local clubs a few times and they think this will help them Master social situations or give talks is that naive or is there actually some benefit to trying that John padharitz you know
the commentary he apparently took improv classes for that reason um yeah and I know that that public speaking is apparently the number one phobia I've read that you know so I suppose getting used to being in front of an audience in some way would be helpful but I think the law of diminishing returns probably kicks in pretty quick it's probably something good to do a little bit I don't think it's going to help you much to do it for a long time
but I don't know I don't know if there's a young comedian appearing at comedy seller for the first time you can see they're very nervous do you say anything can you help them what do you do um what I try to do is
you know make them put them at ease if I can and you know they're sometimes watching you when you audition them my book or SD does this way more often and we spoke about it we speak about it we try to laugh try not to let them look at and
see a stone face try in some way now I know this you know sometimes it's common that the people auditioning people I don't know if it's a power trip or whatever it is they don't do that they'll purposely not show any emotion to the person
auditioning which I think is counterproductive because you're trying to find out how good they are so why would you not want to do as much as you can to bring the best out of them so I try to bring the best out of people as
much as I can this was the same thing when I was auditioning musicians but it's hard because when they're nervous you know they're really nervous it's hard and just telling them don't be nervous is counterproductive it it I don't know if it's counterberg if I don't think it works like I was very nervous to do this interview you could have said anything you want to me we've gotten one ear and not the other you know and I didn't say anything
to you right we just talked about other stuff it wouldn't have talked about the Beach Boys yeah taking my mind off it yeah how is New York City stand-up comedy different from La comedy well they say you know I don't know I'm
repeating only stuff I've heard that that New York stand-up comedy is more battle tested is quicker and funnier and um uh more highly regarded that's that's within the stand-up Community I would also say that the um there's a lot more
celebrities at the La clubs people like Joe Rogan and as opposed to here where they're drop-ins they're on the lineups there so it's much more difficult it's much less stage time for an up-and-coming comic in La that's what I'm told part of the reason I was nervous about this interview is because I don't think anybody realizes how uninformed I am in a certain way about anything that happens outside my little kingdom here you know
or that sounds aggregate but my little environment um and I'm focused on everything that happens in around me and a huge amount of that has nothing to do with comedy it's about customers being happy and people being friendly and the homeless being made right in whatever it is so I don't know that much about La comedy how does Las Vegas comedy fit into the picture and there you have a club right yeah so I mean Vegas audiences are you know uh can
you'll have more conservatives more Trump supporters um it's it's riskier to have a uh too political comic there who will start offending the Trump supporters and whatever it is but other than that I've found to my surprise or not to my surprise but
um to the surprise of other people that audiences are the same that the people who are funny are funny in Vegas just like they are in New York hacks hacks will do a little bit better in Vegas than they will in New York because
more people in New York realize that they're hearing something that's not original but funny is funny and um like people say maybe you can't somebody send somebody out to Dewey or two whatever you know no it doesn't matter at all how important is the seating arrangement for a good comedy show do you think long and hard how close together should the seats be how far away looking down looking up what's what's the deal the
most important thing is that everybody should be a little bit closer than they want to be the claustrophobia of the room I think is extremely important it is not good to have people spread out we do get complaints from time to time about people being that the seats were too tight and it's the one complaint I will not address in terms of making changes in the room because I know that it it helps and why does claustrophobia make the comics funnier
it's just the the intenseness I guess the synchronization is stronger within the audience or well definitely the laughs so louder first of all um you are enjoying it with your friends in a closer physical way you're there's
there's just an intenseness to it I mean it's my answer may not be uh very eloquent but obviously anybody can just picture as you spread people out you can just intuitively understand well that's just not going to work you know you have to
be close together Louis CK who once said that in the 1990s the comedy seller often was empty and there was hardly any audience why was that what happened oh boy was it so first of all week nights at comedy clubs in general and were basically empty comedy was not the popular thing that it is today but the comedy seller was even then we were the newcomer and the low Club on the totem pole The Improv the catch Rising Star Caroline's these were the
the go-to clubs um and it was so slow that my father used to have the waitresses take off their aprons and all sit in the room pretend to be customers so that if somebody would come to the door they wouldn't think they were the only customer you know we went through all all sorts of things to try to to seed the room the weekends were always busy because people want to go out on the weekends but yeah it was it was very tough and actually
those were good old days in a way because the comedians had much less pressure on them in those days so they would take chances they would be hilarious improvised things I just sent a whole wall full of VHS tapes to a
digitizing place in Boston they actually came to pick pick it up um it's gonna cost a lot of money and I'll have a lot of those of that period on video and you own the IP uh no I don't you don't the comedian's own okay yeah yeah but but I will then share
it with them and to the extent that they want to you know have it released or given to a museum in Sundays but there will be Clips there of people like Louis CK performing to like five people and it'll be a different aspect of Louis
CK than anybody's ever seen and it's fascinating like seeing the Beatles and you know the cavern club or something so if you were not the top club back then and please feel free to be immodest and you are the top club right now
what is it the comedy seller did in the meantime to get you to be the top club yeah that's a good question and and I don't ah I mean what I what I think it is is that we were the most dedicated I say this yeah I I'm it's uncomfortable
for me to talk this way but it's this is what I believe we were completely dedicated always always always to doing things the right way in terms of having the best comedians and and being um and treating the customers
the way we wanted to be treated ourselves and this is like to this day it's an obsession with me it's harder and harder to keep that mentality as we're so busy among the staff will become complacent whatever it is I regard this as a big
Challenge and a very important challenge that I have to overcome but it it was the way we treated The Comedians you know my my grandmother was a very warm host my father was an extremely warm host he always and they
ran the club before you did right not my grandmother but just just like a dwarming family kind of tradition like my like my father knew how to take care of people treat them nicely he was a performer himself he understood the
stage from a performer's point of view so I'll give you a perfect example to this day every Comedy Club has a check spot which is during the last comedians they give out the check now the comedians hate this because how can you pay
attention to the comic while you're uh figuring out your your check and from day one my father we're never going to have a check spot I don't care what it takes I don't care if it takes longer to turn over the room I don't care if we lose a show we are not going to have a performer having to compete with paying a check especially if he's talking like music is bad enough so this was something he dug in on and to this day our competitors have check
spots even their last shows where there is no time constraint why I cannot account for that but that's that and and from that you can extrapolate many things that they're probably doing wrong because they don't have their priorities straight why don't you charge a higher price for Saturday nights more people want to go right dude I just found out today that one of our one of the other clubs is charging 38 New York comedy clubs it's
like 38 plus a five dollar ticket fee which is just you know why would there be a ticket it's just a rip-off and an 18 minimum you're talking about almost twice as expensive as we are uh it just seems too much to me doesn't it seem too much who wants to pay that much money it sounds like a bargain compared to a lot of Alternatives try going to see the Knicks now that's comedy of its own sort but I don't know I I mean I I have to take a
look at raising my prices I had no idea I didn't mention this to you right that you didn't know I just saw this today I didn't know this 38 and also I went to a a piano bar called The Nines a drink is 26 dollars
and our cover charge on this Saturday night is 26 so maybe I'm out of touch and I do have to raise the prices in some way but it's always better to be full it's always better for people to think that they got their money's worth uh the longevity
can't be measured for that kind of philosophy and you only know you've blown it when it's too late you only know you've raised your prices when it's too late what I do keep track of in terms of metrics for my business is not how much money we take in is how many people we turn away every week because I know if I see that number dropping that's when I have a you know now I have to react to that so this is all kind of related to each other
now SD is your gatekeeper for comedy Talent what makes her so good at that job oh he says my it was my father's genius to hire a Booker who didn't speak English um listen she gets mad when I say this but I'm going to be very honest
knowing who the good Comics are is not the challenge it is obvious to anybody who the good Comics are you could not speak the language be in the room and know who the funny comics are you because you hear the laughter you see the audience however
she is tremendously good at other things she is a Jewish mother she takes care of them and I know you can make me cry if I thought she's extremely loyal this woman bleeds comedy seller blue more than me she worries about the club more than me
she had she broke her rib a few weeks ago in terrible pain I said Essie how are you doing she was on a terrible pain on pain that's what you need to stay home she goes stay home as long as you need she goes I'm at work
I'll say what are you doing at work she knows now she knows she's gonna get paid this is a dedication you cannot find this anywhere and and people see that in her and they respond to it I mean the most famous people in the world Judd Apatow John Mayer they're texting with SD they go out to dinner with us they they adore her um and that is the magic that she brings to it how is it that you notice sure please more you know when Trump
used to talk about the Deep state right it always rang true to me because every boss has a deep state in his in his business because anybody so friends I have a general manager I'm not talking about my general manager and and a customer is complaining now the general manager doesn't want to let me know about the customer complaint because in some way this reflects on her management of the place so so there's immediately the incentives are all bad
that's why it's always better if you're a customer to ask for the owner because the owner is the only one who really really cares who has no SD is completely loyal there is zero deep state with SD and this as a boss is something you may never have and when you do have it it's Priceless I cannot tell you the sense of of of ease I have that I can speak with her totally candidly totally frankly about any comedian about anything in the
world and I know it stays between us she'll never ever let it on it's an amazing thing how is it that you notice when the level of the light in the club is dimmed ever so slightly I just noticed this is I I I my father had it I have it I can walk into a room and I notice it immediately people I've trained who were there every day don't notice I'm like don't you see that oh yeah you're right boss I didn't see that this is just it's like you know
it's a talent I would a cop to it it's a talent What's the craziest government regulation comedy seller has to follow well the the dumbest thing it's not huge to me is that when they raise the minimum wage they raise it for tips tipped employees rather than the the people who are working hard in the kitchen let's say now our servers I think finally caught up with the everybody our servers make as a waitering job quite a bit of money
you know some of them can make a hundred thousand dollars a year they would pay me to work here I'm not suggesting they do it they they but they they the regulations really didn't take care of for a while and I said I think
the minimum wage may have caught up now they did not take care of the people who are really laboring hard at low wages I I thought that was a tremendous mistake the sum total of the regulations is crazy it's it's Death By A Thousand
Cuts so then we wanted to move a wall downstairs to expand the kitchen by I don't know seven feet this was something we could have done without even closing in order to comply with the law we were closed for like six or seven months you have to get Landmark permission one thing after another after another after another we can't put in a bathroom because then we'd have to renovate the bathrooms downstairs and have room for there's so many things
we're very very fortunate because we're established and we're successful but you wonder how it is that in a new business can overcome these costs my father started his first place he was driving he was a cab driver
the notion that a cab driver could aspire to opening a restaurant in the village now it's it's impossible he couldn't do it Coleman Hughes says I should ask you for your 911 story oh my gosh she gave me help I spied on you did he really of
course he did all right well this is not a flattering story at all I don't know that I guess I will and I'll try to do it short so you know when I was younger not anymore listen I was a musician I'm not proud of it but I was I caroused
I was not faithful to girlfriends whatever I'm just copping to it I can't believe I can't believe because I texted Coleman today like he's like it'll be fine don't worry about it and then the only bad question was from him
so I so I had decided that the only way you could have an affair I wasn't married God forbid was that you and the woman had to be the only two people who know about it so I had his girlfriend I said we're gonna go to Washington DC
and I didn't tell anybody and I can't believe you're doing this and I was in a hotel and my cell phone is ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and I don't want to answer it and finally I'd answer it and if someone
working in the office calling on behalf of my father where are you where are your father's going I said I I'm I'm in I'm in DC and I spoke to my father's wife I'm in DC and they're like don't you understand what's happened I had no idea it was it was and I turn on the TV so I turned on the TV it was 9 11. the World Trade Center is full that's well I'm in DC that's all I say so then my girlfriend now my wife my wife knows the story her
mother I'm really trying to condense the story shows up to the Olive Tree and that's the attached restaurant yeah listeners who doesn't know um looking for her daughter who and she sees my stepmother and she says have you seen Juanita and Ava myself she says it's okay they're in DC and uh my my wife's mother says she's not in DC I just saw her two hours ago and then it dawned so I got busted on 9 11. and I just remember you couldn't get
back into Manhattan and it was burned I hope it burns and burns and like I I just putting it off and putting it off it was the most horrible thing but I will tell you an interesting aspect of that story and this story has been
written up in a book by the way if he wants to get the long version of it when we went out into DC that day there was nobody at the White House sure and we were able we began to walk down the path realizing we could walk into the building
like January 6th and then I got scared I said you know what this is probably not something we should do and I chickened out and I went the other way and if I it was before a cell phones had cameras but if I had but it was it
was like uh I am legend or something it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen I just happened to be there and I couldn't capture it but deserted just like you could just walk right into the government buildings it's crazy anyway
is there an alternate universe where you become a professional musician a guitarist yes there is I would say that I mean I was a I was a very good musician at in high school I was a hired as an accompanist for a classical oot player and I played
Carnegie Hall and a number of important um uh of those types of rooms I was recommended to study with Segovia I was considered to be a a loot player a loot player no I mean yes which is which is you know yes yes
the Ood was a foreigners of the loot um and then I had a whole career playing music I was pretty successful at it and um I was good not not a genius musically like I play with some people who were who I could never play like they can
play but I was always the leader I always became the leader in any situation even with musicians who were better than me in certain ways it was something about it's related to being knowing when the lights are up and down
there was something about my sensibility musically I will say this about myself which was unique to me and and very good and that's why to this day like I still play with the very very best musicians in the world will come down and hang out in the Olive Tree and um and you're playing electric guitar then well uh because now I play like a nylon electric guitar yeah yeah but as a band leader more than anything else that was really something that um
I was I was just naturally good at the old Burt Bacharach song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head what are the chords oh I know the C C major sevens he said I could tell you all the questions for like all the songs um by anyone Coleman says you can not as not Coleman no not not all the songs not by anyone I'm pretty good at it I'm I don't have perfect pitch people with perfect pitch are always better at it I'm not as good
as this guy Nick caselino who plays with me he he will have a higher batting average I'm not a genius I'm not but I'm very good but you know a lot of people like like you hear all Beatles records Paul McCartney's making mistakes you
know there's a music has so many different aspects that go into it in terms of what it means to be a great musician this artistic aspects to it there's strategic aspects to it is there's sensitivity aspects to us all sorts of
things Beach Boys I Get Around what makes it a great song well it's just first of all that introduction it's so fresh the this this barber shop kind of sound with the this rock music I mean as a kid I can remember vividly the first
time I heard it I'd never heard anything like it that's always impressive to me when something comes out of nowhere and you can't even trace it as a as a progression of what came before that's what those Beach Boys songs were like to
me that's like the first time I heard I Want to Hold Your Hand these kind of things I'm not exactly unique the first time I heard uh Teen Spirit the Nirvana song right there's just something about and and again I'm saying this but everybody says that right first time I heard Strawberry Fields Forever maybe I was 10 I couldn't believe it yeah so I get around has that now I get around is very sophisticated harmonically it's got a key change and
it goes down a step afterwards and he comes he finishes I think he finishes where he started I mean you can't say enough about Ryan Wilson right this guy's a Real Genius who's the most underrated guitarist in your view the guitar players who are not fancy like Paul McCartney whose touch is magically you can tell it's him immediately like Paul Simon James Taylor gets um more credit but is also not understood to be the genius that he is
because he basically invented an entire style nobody plays like him nobody sounds like him and nobody played like that before him um Willie Nelson's uh soloing I know a lot of people like Miles Davis you know they get it because it's so
simple it's all phrasing it's something that anybody would think they could do but they can't quite do it like him it's kind of it's kind of like the now like Sinatra singing like nobody gets that but yet everybody can't
believe how good he is but he's not he's not seeing like Ella Fitzgerald he's not singing like Tony Bennett it's almost approachable you'd think you could almost sing like Sinatra but you can't the guitar players like that um
I've listed some of them those are the people I really admire I really don't I never did enjoy the fancy guitar players like the Guitar Gods because that's not really my approach to music not more song oriented I like the songs
I like the I even like the solos that are not necessarily improvised sorry the fact that you mastered the Ood which is unusual right how has that shaped your understanding of rock and roll and popular music what is it that you see differently well I'll I'll broaden out that answer because I don't think I mastered you would I can play but you played it well yeah yeah that I was very very lucky I wish my father alive for you to meet him
I had very very Broad influences in my home and a total lack of snobbery about anything and and actually this is why I take to you in a way I think you have that too so any any thing that was considered to be great within its culture the greatest Arabic music The Great the great whatever it was it was assumed that it was it was upon me to learn why it was great and then and you can do that you like you bury yourself in it you'll always
have an accent at it in some way but at some point you get used to it and then you begin to be able to be to discern the good from the bad and then somehow that becomes part of your vocabulary and and how you play and and that just
happens you can't you can't really plan that so in some way having all these influences made me unique in a certain way as a musician but unique in in just in everything that I do I like to think because I don't know I try to be very very
open-minded I I hope the answer answered meanders a little bit but I do think these things are connected like it's it's a it's an idea that's not limited to music it's just an approach to the world and you're and you're you're the best example I know of this thank you the Greenwich Village live music scene does that have a future aren't the rents too high too many tourists come here well it all just become stupid I think it's done the the um
when I started a music Club in 88 everybody had live music I mean there was live music everywhere not just On Bleecker Street but throughout the city um a few things happen at the same time first of all fewer and fewer people play the kind of music which is practical for live and is much more electronic and Hip-Hop and whatever it is number one number two rents got higher and landlords don't want noise our neighbors don't want noise and it's
almost impossible to control the noise and um DJs became super popular on their own and DJs are way cheaper and uh more predictable in what they're going to do you know you hire some live band you don't know if they're what they're going
to play or if they'll if they'll show up there's so many reasons that like me when I was a kid McDougall Street was so now this was you know during the folk rock era when the love and spoonfuls around the corner and
Dylan was McDougall Street was so busy you you couldn't even walk down the street the cars had to go you know like at a tiny Pace just it was a flood of people you could see this a little bit in the movie The President's Analyst I don't know if you ever saw it no believe there's clips of The Village in those days so it's and and then it just has decayed ever since then I think live music I don't think it's coming back anywhere in New York
I don't think so I mean I shouldn't say it never but I mean like my Monday Night Live music that I do with Coleman right it's pretty popular but um I don't think it but it's very small and uh I I couldn't I couldn't even imagine
succeeding in a live music club now you can do it with famous Acts but the kind of non-famous live music Club no and that's partly why comedy's gotten busier too comedy in certain ways replaced music as the thing people go to
do final question what will you do next well um we just closed on uh the biggest thing I've ever done which is a new building on Third Street was the former McDonald's and I want to open a room that hopefully be the flagship room
should be a very very intimate 200 seat theater-ish kind of place with a mezzanine um doing that also largely because I have kids and I want them to uh I want to have enough that they don't have to fight over it I've seen so many families
torn apart fighting over Estates and things like that I'm trying to keep having fun again one of the things I admire about you and I think as I get to know you and I'm more comfortable speaking with you but I think that we're similar only in
the sense that I think you're you're trying to live life on your own terms and do exactly what you want to do and enjoy exactly what you want to do when you want to do it and um that has really been the joy of of my
life so far and that's what I'm trying to do now I have kids that's a huge joy in my life so I don't know exactly what I'll do next after that it'll be whatever I want to do that I'm interested in at the time to to to enjoy myself that's really the way it's been all along gnome dwarmen of Comedy seller thank you very much thank you Tyler thank you very much was it okay oh it'll be a great episode oh absolutely it'll be a huge hit