Grandma’s Eulogy #8: Everybody Knows this
is Nowhere
By Ted Pettingell
One of our favorite comedy clubs in Boston will be closing its doors in a few short days. As such, we’re having a few comedians write eulogies about their beloved, Grandma(‘s Basement Comedy Club.) This is the 8th…
Prologue:
It was a cold winter night in early 2008, my friend Shawn and I stood alone in Imman Square in Cambridge. This
was the night of the last Great and Secret Show at the old ImprovBoston. For those of you who don’t know, the Great and Secret show was a weekly show that happened every Thursday at 10 PM. It was started by the Walsh Brothers and I can’t describe how amazing it was.
The Walsh’s had moved to LA about a year earlier but the show continued on. Somehow we were the last two people left hanging out. I had been doing comedy for about two years at that point but I never performed on that show. I had seen the show there many times and saw how magical it could be. That night a lot of people got on stage and shared how special the room was to them but they were all gone now, it was just me and Shawn standing there probably not realizing we had missed out on being part of something completely unique unto itself and something that would never exist again.
Everybody Knows this is Nowhere
I honestly can’t remember if I even went on stage that first time at the HoJos,
I must have otherwise I would have never gone back – but I can’t say for sure. What I do remember was Benny, how couldI ever forget Benny? Shawn Donovan and myself decided to check out the new open mic at the Howard Johnson’s. We had heard the first week had been a shit show. Even back then we couldn’t stay away from a bad situation. Also there wasn’t anything else to do. There was a real lack of shows on Thursday back in the fall of 2008. We got there and it was empty except for Benny, he was behind the bar being welcoming as fuck.
Benny was the bartender/manager and he wanted to start doing comedy so he started an open mic. He told us there had been a better audience turn out the first week but some of the audience had a misunderstanding with one of the comics. It turns out it was Gary Petersen and he had told some people to shut up and listen. It was a precedent he would stick to.
I hope his retrospective is just a retelling of all the times he almost got into a fight for telling some drunk to listen.
Anyway back to my story, Benny went on stage and did typical new comic stuff that has been washed from my mind. What I do remember was he told some stories about stuff that had happened to him working at the bar. Even way back at the beginning the room already had its own mythology and it felt almost ancient – like something had happened there before any of us existed.
Everything is always changing into something new, but most of the times we don’t notice it. Then for some reason something drastic happens and we realize everything is different now. Then later on we look back on it and say something cliche like, “that was a time of a great transition.” So 2008 was a time of a great transition in Boston Comedy.
The Comedy Connection had closed and it left a void that still hasn’t been filled all these years later. Many places tried, but no one has done it yet. I bring this up because the Connection was the goal when I started. You wanted to get good enough to get passed at the Connection – you wanted to get to work with national acts. It was something to measure your growth as a comic and it gave you something to work towards. At the same time there was a great exodus of comics leaving.
By the time the HoJo’s mic started, there weren’t many comics left that weren’t either dinosaurs who are permanent parts of Boston Comedy or brand new Comics with at most two or three years of experience.
It was the kind of atmosphere you need for something new to happen.
I think early on there was an allure to the HoJo’s because the generation of comics before mine would tell us stories about how there had been an open mic in the same place back when they started. It was called Chops
Lounge and by all accounts it was gloriously awful.
Those early shows were real touch and go. I think if it weren’t for Benny being in charge of everything the room wouldn’t have lasted. I can remember a lot of time there being almost no comics there and even less audience members. Somehow though it continued.
From early on the room really had a clubhouse feel. There was a good mix of the few remaining veterans and
newer comics and all the dark insane personalities that would flock to that room. Even if you had something else to do on Thursday night, you would still go to the HoJo’s afterwards because you knew you could probably still get on and there would be fun people hanging out. Guys like Brian Moote, Andrew Sleighter, Alvin David and so many others who I’m forgetting or don’t do comedy anymore. People getting there later gave late night at the HoJo’s a feeling of it being a different kind of show where all types of weirdness could happen. I don’t know if Benny liked this but he certainly didn’t do anything hamper it.
It was a circus and he was the ring master.
On one particularly bizarre night I showed up super late to find that the only audience members left were a table of college kids who had showed up to support their friend. He had gone on first, it was now about three hours later and they had endured the horrors of what a show and go open mic can be, not knowing that their was nothing keeping them there and they were free to go. When I went on they were not buying the bullshit I was selling. I asked for requests and one of the other comics in the back (it was Shawn) sarcastically yelled, “Two Truths
and a Lie!” That was one of the signature bits of Dan Sally, a comedian much better than I am. I took it as a challenge and spent the next five minutes on stage reciting his joke to best of my ability.
It’s probably the only time I’ve ever done someone else material on stage. Probably another half hour went by and
the show had devolved into me and two other comics on stage doing impressions of other local comics and these college kids still wouldn’t leave. That’s when Dan Sally walked through the door with the singular purpose of telling ‘Two Truths and a Lie.’ I immediately brought him on stage and he launched into the bit. The audience, completely
confused, sat in stunned silence as he repeated the exact words I had said only minutes earlier. As he neared the final punchline, one of the kids stood up from the table and proclaimed,”You can’t be serious!”
I don’t think that kid ever did another open mic again. He wasn’t cut out for the darkness.
I like to think he went home a dedicated his life to doing acts or good… or maybe he just killed himself, who
knows?
John Paul, Ted, Tom
One of the more bizarre aspects of the HoJo’s was its relationship with the Boston Red Sox. Most of the time the Tiki Hideaway was a forgotten dive bar inside a forgotten hotel, but 81 nights out of year it was a happening hidden gem of a sports bar. Benny would talk about how rooting for local sports was basically rooting for the economy. If you ever need proof of that thesis, that bar would be it. Because of this 6 months a year the schedule of the show was completely irregular. I think this added to the mystique of the HoJo’s. It gave it a scarcity that other show and go open mics don’t have. Once the mic started to catch on people would hate it when the Sox were on a home stand, but would be so excited to perform on a shit show open mic when they were gone. I also think this may have had an effect of washing out people who weren’t committed. I don’t even mean committed to comedy, I mean to that room in particular because that room required devotion to keep going back.
Night of the Living Ted
By 2009 there was a wave of new comedians who, in my opinion, were not like any class of comics that came before them. These were people who were not tied to the old rules of Boston Comedy. They seem to operate without any regard for appeasing the powers that were or doing two person bringers or any of the other politics of old. There were no rules, it was the wild west. All that mattered was stage time and suddenly there was plenty of it and all it took was showing up. People like Matt Kona, John Paul Rivera, and Tom Dunlap proved you could get good by just showing up and doing the free shows for no one.
I was a paradigm behind, I still wanted a scene with order. As much as i loved the chaos of the off the rails shows, part of me longed for the days where older comics told you what was what. Eventually I came around. John Paul and Matt would go on to become two of my best friends. Hanging out at hojos and embracing the anarchy really brought us together.
New Years Eve: Y2Kona
I would say as more time went on the room began to take on a life of its own but that would be a lie, the room always had a life of its own. But as the years went on, comedy rooms opened and comedy rooms closed but the HoJo’s somehow became a constant thing. Benny made Tom Dunlap his second in command. Weekend shows became a regular thing. Now there would be weeks where you might end up at the HoJo’s three or four nights
in a row, hanging out at the bar til way too late, then making your way to Tasty Burger, or some diner on the other side of the city, or maybe walking to Kenmore Square, getting drunk in a bank parking lot and eventually ending up at the beach.
We were doing the things young comedians do, having the kind of nights you don’t truly appreciate til years later.
It was fun. We were usually drunk. Mick Greenwood was there sometime (Happy Mick? I mentioned you.)
The shows weren’t always good. The open mic only grew longer and longer as each week went by. The weekend shows were hit or miss, a lot of the time miss. This I think was one of the keys to the room. For as much time as we spent in that place, what went on there really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. That sounds like a shitty thing to say, but I really do think it’s what made the HoJo’s so great. Once you embraced how your set there didn’t matter, you could go on stage with a fearless attitude. For me this was the biggest factor in my growth as a comic.
I knew I had a place where I could throw spaghetti at the wall and if it didn’t stick, I could try and throw the pot of hot water through the wall.
I think this might have driven Benny crazy. He was so ambitious and would talk about how he wanted the room to be great and something bigger than it was. Looking at it now it was great and I think it was bigger than anyone ever gave it credit for.
Ted and Shawn
Grandma’s Basement, that was the official name of the room when comedy was happening. It was the name from the beginning. I never liked the name, I always thought it was silly. The room was always just the HoJo’s to me.
When I started writing this thing, I wanted to say what the room meant to me, but I also wanted to put the HoJo’s in context of what it was for the Boston Comedy Scene. I hope I did that. Anyway let’s tie this all together.
After the old Improv Boston closed they continued to do the Great and Secret Show at the new location. It wasn’t the same. I did a set on one of the final Great and Secret Shows at the new Improv Boston theater. That’s all it was, a set. There was no magic. I never got to really be a part of what I had seen on so many Thursday nights only a year or two earlier.
My friend Shawn recorded an album at the HoJo’s. I was on that show, that was magic.
The last Saturday show, as seen from the stage
It was a magic unique to that room and no one else is ever going to get experience it, which is sad but was an
inevitability.
We were always playing with borrowed time at the HoJo’s. It had always been a year away from closing. We all hoped it wouldn’t, but we knew it would someday. That day is here now. We should be happy we got so many good years out of it. I want to say the spirit of the HoJo’s will live on because we are that spirt and we will continue to make comedy, but we are never going to get back what we had in that room. The HoJo’s didn’t belong to us, we
belonged to it. It’s another “time of great transition” in Boston Comedy.
A year from now there will be new comics starting out in a
completely different landscape from the one we have today.
