Al Martin didn’t intend to work in comedy. Over three decades ago, he went to an open mic night on a dare and happened to fall in love with it. He went on to open four comedy clubs: New York Comedy Club in Boca Raton, Fla., and three in Manhattan: Broadway Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club and Greenwich Village Comedy Club, where comedians including Dave Chappelle, T.J. Miller, Laurie Kilmartin, Dave Attell and Artie Lange have performed over the years.
In his new book, “Did It On a Dare: How I Created a Comedy Empire in 30 Short Years,” Martin chronicles his adventures in comedy and how he became the successful club owner he is today. The Journal caught up with him to talk about the book and how he imagines clubs will look when New York reopens after the coronavirus pandemic.
Jewish Journal: How did you get into comedy?
Al Martin: I was dating a girl who was a stand-up comedian. She was doing a lot of open mics and she asked me to go watch her show one night. It was so bad. She asked me how it was and if I’ve ever learned anything in life, with people you’re dating, you can’t tell them the truth. Same thing with comedy. I said it sounded good to me. She didn’t believe me. Finally, after she asked me for the 10th time, I said, “All right, it was terrible.” We got into a 15-minute fight. She said, “You know, you’re pretty funny. Why don’t you go onstage next week?”
A week later, I signed up for an open mic. Just as it was my turn to go up, after 2 1/2 hours in, Andrew Dice Clay walked in. It was 1989. He was rehearsing for his HBO special. He ran the whole 45 minutes before I went up. When he was done, it was 1 in the morning. No one wanted to listen to more comedy. When the emcee announced me, he didn’t even know my name. There were two people in the audience. I bombed about as bad as you can onstage. But in the three hours I waited to go up, I met some interesting characters. I had nothing going on socially or work-wise, so I hit up other mics. I had the bug.
JJ: When did you go from doing comedy to running shows?
AM: About a year in. I wasn’t able to get stage time. I started a room. It took off. We were operating six or seven nights a week. I stumbled into a full-time comedy club.
JJ: When did you open your clubs?
AM: I opened New York Comedy Club [in Manhattan] in 1989. Then I opened up Broadway Comedy Club, which was initially supposed to be called the Jackie Mason Comedy Club. I had struck a deal with Jackie Mason and he invited me to watch him perform in Vegas. He might be popular in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Florida, but nobody gives a crap about him in Vegas. He was in a 5,000-seat arena and there were 300 people there that night. Most of them were getting wheeled in or they were using walkers or canes. I told my wife, “Honey, I think we need to change the name of the club. I don’t know if anyone who likes him will be around in 10 years. They might be dead.” Initially, we were the Improv and then we became the Broadway Comedy Club. In 2007, I opened the Greenwich Village Comedy Club on MacDougal Street around the corner from NYU.
JJ: Are there any stories in the book that stick out?
AM: For a brief time, I owned a comedy club in Boca Raton, which has a high population of Jewish people. My partner and I would always stand there in amazement because when people walked in the door, they were never happy no matter where you sat them. You would put them in the first row and they’d say, “I don’t want to be there, they’ll pick on me.” I’d put the next people in the third row and they’d say, “Why am I in the third row? The first row is empty!” This one person said she loved the smell of food, so we put her near the kitchen. She said, “You’re going to mess up my diet.” It’s like Jackie Mason says in his joke, Jewish people always walk into a restaurant like they’re a partner.
One time at New York Comedy Club [in Manhattan] in the late ’90s, we were doing a show with Dave Chappelle, Tracy Morgan, Chris Rock and Damon Wayans. This little kid walked in and everyone made fun of him. They said, “Hey, shortie, are you doing comedy?” That kid who walked in is the biggest one of them all: Kevin Hart.
JJ: Which Jewish comedians have performed at your club?
AM: Quite a few Jewish comedians got their start at my club, like Dan Naturman and Cory Kahaney. Rodney Dangerfield appeared in my club. The last week Johnny Carson was doing “The Tonight Show,” Rodney came in and did a spot to rehearse for it.
JJ: You grew up in Brooklyn, yes?
AM: Yes. There was a dividing line in Brooklyn: Nostrand Avenue. If you were on one side, it was almost 100% Jewish, and if you were on the other side, there were a lot of Irish and Italian people and almost no Jews. My mom didn’t have a lot of money at the time but she wanted to get a house for us. Her attitude was that it was only a couple of blocks, big deal. A couple of blocks could mean an entire world. We wound up on the gentile side of the tracks and I was viciously bullied. To make up for the fact that I didn’t have any Jewish friends or influences, they put me in a really Orthodox Hebrew school. I was getting beaten up during the day because I was Jewish, and then in Hebrew school I wasn’t Jewish enough, so a lot of kids would pick on me there. When my mother found out that one of our neighbors was slapping me around, she went nuts on him. She’s 93 now. She was a tough cookie. She taught me not to take crap from anybody, and now I live my life like that.
JJ: How are you managing during the pandemic?
AM: My main job has been trying to negotiate with landlords over long-term leases. I want to make sure we can get ready to open. It’s going to be a whole new comedy world. We are going to have to take people’s temperatures. The audience might be wearing masks. We might have to put up plexiglass to protect the comics from the audience and vice versa. But I do think people are ready to go out. They want to laugh.
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