Time to start tossing people out

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 4th, 2006

Josh Sneed, in a MySpace blog entry, writes about getting booed offstage at his hometown Funny Bone.

…It wasn’t a “Now that wasn’t very nice” kind of boo. It was a “We don’t know you, and we don’t like you” kind of boo. It was the kind of boo that might have made me quit comedy had it happened when I first started…

Exactly what the f*** is going on out there? (And, by “out there,” we mean in Comedy Land.) Decent, honest, successful comedians getting booed. Booed to the point where they can’t continue. Sometimes before they’re given a chance to get their set going. Often against the wishes of the people who are actually enjoying the set.

This is bad. Very bad. It’s time for club managers to start a zero tolerance policy and make it clear that such behavior is grounds for expulsion. When was it ever not grounds for expulsion? When did this booing thing gain any traction? We’ve seen three or four examples in the past nine months of incidents like the one Sneed describes.

And in at least one incident (in which The Female Half of the Staff was set upon by an ornery O & A crowd at Helium in Philadelphia), not one patron was tossed. Weak attempts were made to silence the goofballs, but to no avail. Where are the bouncers? Are there bouncers?

It makes no sense. We seem to recall that timid club managers, back when The Bust was happening in excruciating slow motion, would tolerate almost any kind of bad behavior from patrons because ticket sales were slumping and they were reluctant to piss anybody off. Now, however, live comedy has never been a bigger draw. There’s never been a better time to make sure that everyone that comes through the door has a pleasant experience.

Folks were fond of saying that television killed live comedy. If the current crop of club managers aren’t careful, live comedy will kill live comedy.

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