Seattle's amateur stand-up comedy scene is alive and kicking

It's a typical Friday night at Mr. Spot's Chai House in Ballard: The bohemian cafe is packed with scruffy, bespectacled hipsters, their conversation humming over pitchers of beer. On a small stage in the corner of the room, a steady stream of amateur stand-up comedians takes turns at an open mike. Each gets three minutes to test his latest material.

First up, a tall skinny guy in his late 20s. He tells a joke about beating his wife.

Ba-dum-bum. ... Silence. Next!

Another 20-something struggles to raise the microphone stand. The speakers howl. He flips the hair out of his eyes and tells a joke about mistaking his girlfriend for a coffee table. The crowd is silent. He tells the same joke again in a different way.

Crickets. A girl in the back whispers, "Oh ... God." Next!

That's the way it goes for about an hour and a half. Jokes bomb. Acts flop. Someone answers his cellphone on stage. The audience — mostly other comics and their friends — squirms with embarrassment. And once in a while, there's a diamond in the rough.

Welcome to amateur stand-up comedy in Seattle. Its popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, but for now, it's back. This time around, the scene is led by a tight-knit group of young hipsters (most of them in their 20s) who perform for free at bars and cafes from Ballard to Kirkland.

"The scene is definitely getting trendier," says Ron Reid, who has been involved with comedy here since the late '70s, first as a practitioner, then as a manager of Comedy Underground, a quirky venue in Pioneer Square.

"It's a little more indie and artsy than it's been in the past. The shows are either free or 5 bucks, so ... there's not this push to be exclusive or 'make it big.' I think the hipsters like it because no one's 'selling out.' "

That's not to say most of those at Mr. Spot's open mike (or the Lo-Ball Comedy Show, as it's called) wouldn't quit their day jobs to do comedy if they had the chance. But that's not the point. In this new comedy scene, the nightly routine is foremost a hobby. It's a compulsion and an expressive art form, worthwhile even without fame or riches.

Paul Merrill, a stand-up comedian since 2003 and a regular emcee at Lo-Ball, talks to the audience, his thick black-rimmed glasses glinting: "Alternative comedy is getting big ... . There's so much new talent on the scene. It's like what was happening with music in the early '90s, minus the coke."

Lure of the open mike

Near the end of the first hour of the open-mike at Lo-Ball, a black woman in her mid-20s takes the microphone and beams at the crowd. Then, smoothing her jeans with her palms, she rearranges her face. She's suddenly serious, almost mournful.

"I don't want to bring down the mood here," she says, her brown eyes wide. "But I'd just like to say, it's been almost two years since Katrina happened and ... "

The crowd leans in. She pauses. One beat. Two.

"And, well, I just think it's important for you people to remember I wasn't there. Stop sending me canned goods, will you?"

The crowd cracks up.

That's Danielle Radford, 26, one of the diamonds in the rough. She's a temporary court secretary by day and, as of June, a stand-up comedian at night. She considers no subject matter — race, sex, body-hair bleaching — off-limits. "The only way to get started is performing at open mikes, which don't require invitations," she says. "I end up doing them four or five times a week."

The open mikes can be tragic — "You go for the comedy, but stay for the tragedy," says comic Kevin Hyder of the Lo-Ball show. But they're a much-needed forum for new talent.

Xung Lam, a petite man, tries his hand at Comedy Underground's open mike: "My first name actually starts with an 'X,' " he says, his voice monotone. "Which makes my initials XL."

A nest of comedy

Unlike most comics laboring on the open-mike circuit, Radford got her first break early on. A few months into her career, the People's Republic of Komedy, a local comedy group, invited her to perform at its regular Wednesday night Laff Hole show at Chop Suey, a venue in Capitol Hill.

The Laff Hole's roster is invite-only, and so avoids the train-wreck factor of open mikes. It's also a benchmark for newbie comics.

For the past couple years, the People's Republic of Komedy has been a mainstay of the local comedy scene. It was founded a few years ago by Hyder, Dan Carroll, Emmett Montgomery and Scott Moran — local comics hoping to create "a nest" for amateur comics who need more stage time to develop their acts. It sponsors the Lo-Ball (Lower Ballard) Comedy Show and several other comedy events around Seattle, including last year's amateur comedy marathon, "Week of Fun."

While New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are still considered the major leagues for comedy, Seattle prides itself on being more nurturing.

"Put it this way: In New York, audience are like, 'You'd better be funny, [mother-expletive],' " says Reid. "In Seattle, they're like, 'OK, I see where you're going with that. I'll be patient.' "

Take it personally

At a recent Laff Hole show, improv comic Dartanion London, who is trying his hand at stand-up, did a bit about looking like Harry Potter. (He's a spitting image.) While he makes no issue of his ex-girlfriend's "Harry Potter fetish" — "Seriously, I'm not complaining," he says, raising an eyebrow — he advises men against admitting a "Hermione Fetish" of their own.

He stops pacing and faces the crowd: "For some reason, that's a little creepier."

Later, London leans against a table in the crowded bar and talks shop. "Stand-up is really, really hard. You have to get up there all by yourself. You don't get a script or anyone else to help you. The crowd just looks at you and says, 'OK, now be funny.' After my first time, I never ever wanted to do it again."

Not only do you have to be "yourself" on stage, says London, you have to tell jokes about yourself as well. "You've got nothing to hide behind."

People's Republic's Carroll, a radio-advertising salesman by day, says the funniest material is always "the stuff that hits closest to home." The stuff that forces the audience to see you as an ordinary, unspectacular person, just like themselves. It takes talent to make a very personal, sad experience both universal and funny, he says.

When transsexual comic Barbara Sehr got started, she avoided talking about her gender identity — "the elephant in the middle of the room," as she calls it.

"It was too personal. I couldn't talk to anyone about it, much less a room full of strangers. The idea was terrifying."

A few weeks ago at Comedy Underground, Sehr jogged onto stage, peeled off her cardigan and held her arms above her head, as if ending a gymnastics routine. She paused a moment, her short gray bob hanging in her face, her lipstick shining in the stage lights.

She raised an eyebrow and, in a deeply masculine voice, asked coyly, "Any questions?"

The crowd laughed.

Jackpot!

But all this begs the question: What if the crowd doesn't laugh? How do these beginners get on stage, bare their vulnerabilities, bomb and then do it again, night after night, without the solace of a paycheck?

"It's completely sick," says Merrill, the bespectacled emcee. "But all of us have been there. Some people blame the audience — 'They're too dumb to get it' — but most of us just sort of stand there and think, 'Oh God, I can make it just five more minutes.' "

Once, Merrill told a joke about pedophilia to a room full of fathers and middle-school-age daughters. They didn't think he was funny. At all.

Radford, the secretary, compares the highs and lows of stand-up comedy to a gambling addiction: "Sometimes you win big, and sometimes you lose big. When you lose, you think, I'm done, I'm done. I'll never do this again. But secretly, you're thinking: Man, next time I'm going to win huge!"

In the context of amateur stand-up, "winning huge" is playing a major venue, going on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," or — the quintessential reward — getting to quit your day job and do comedy for a living.

And there's hope. The late comedian Mitch Hedberg got a boost to his career when he won the Seattle International Comedy Competition in 1997. And local boy Kyle Cease, who revved up at the open mike at Comedy Underground, recently landed a special on HBO.

"For now, it's not about all that," says Radford. "It's about working my booty off and having fun. Trying to get as good as I can."

She stops and smiles. "But, you know, now that you mention it, fame wouldn't be so bad. I'll move to L.A., do a bunch of TV shows, party with Paris Hilton, sleep with some warmed-over Backstreet Boy and about two weeks later you'll see me without my knickers on the cover of US Weekly."

She pauses for a moment, then smiles. "Oh, comedy. It's just tragic sometimes, isn't it?"

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com