Laughing Matter: Business Booming : Night Life: New comedy clubs springing up as San Diego County residents spurn television for live entertainment.

SAN DIEGO —  Cable and network television brought comedy to the small screen in a big way, but thousands of San Diegans are leaving the electronic hearth for the warm glow of live comedy and triggering a comedy club boon.

Four new comedy clubs have sprung up in the county in the past year. Hotels and nightclubs have joined the rush by offering weekly comedy nights.

“We recognize many of the comics’ names from television, and we’d like to seem them live,” said Mira Mesa resident Jim Snow, who was taking in a weekend show with his wife at The Improv in Pacific Beach. “They don’t have to hold back as much as they do on television.”

“This is kind of a treat,” said Ronnie Warren, who had come down from San Juan Capistrano to take in the show at The Improv.

Going to a comedy club is “different than a nightclub and a step up from a movie,” said San Diegan Jonathon Chillas, who was at the Comedy Isle on Mission Bay with his girlfriend. “It’s more of a show.”

People who have never been to a comedy club are often surprised by the experience, said Benny Ricardo, a former Chargers place-kicker who became a comedian and frequently performs at Oceanside’s Comedy Nite club. Since it opened a year ago, the club has had no fewer than 6,000 people a month pass through its doors.

After shows, Ricardo stands outside the club and talks to people about their reaction. They were afraid every word was going to be vulgar, he said. “There are the Andrew Dice Clays, but it’s better to be clean and clever.”

Tripling the number of night clubs from two to six in a year has turned the county into a consumer’s market with something for everyone. San Diego entertainment spots are offering everything from the abrasive Andrew Dice Clay, who has nearly sold out 7,500 seats at the Sports Arena for his appearance tonight, to Mrs. Hughes, billed at the Comedy Nite as “Erma Bombeck with an attitude.”

“Everybody with a flashlight and a microphone thinks they have a club,”said Mark Brazill, who travels the circuit to perform at the more than dozen Improv clubs throughout the country. Even strip joints are adding comedians to their performances, he said.

But each of the full-time comedy clubs has carefully carved out a niche by offering something a bit different to club goers, according to club managers.

The Improv in Pacific Beach bills itself as the premier dinner cafe.

“What we are is a comedy cafe,” said Improv manager Dave Becky of the 5-year-old club. “It’s a dinner theater. People can do an entire evening here.”

The 14-year-old Comedy Store in La Jolla bills itself as a place run by comics as a training ground for bright, new comics. The three Comedy Stores in La Jolla and Hollywood have spawned such stars as Robin Williams and Sam Kenison, manager Fred Burns said.

“It’s like a comedy college,” he said. “Our bartender, cashier, some of our waitresses and doormen are aspiring comics. They develop and become comics. We raise our own like a comedy stable.”

The Stand Up downtown and The Stand Up in Solana Beach bill themselves as smokeless comedy showcases. The downtown showcase is housed at Croce’s Top Hat Bar and Grille, and the Solana Beach Stand Up presents its shows at Diego’s Surfside restaurant.

“San Diego is a very health-conscious city,” said owner Paul Messier, who created the month-old twins. “We’re going after the nonsmoking customers, and we’re confident they will come out. My wife and I have 10 years in the comedy business. At other clubs, we got so many calls from people asking if we had a nonsmoking section. A lot of people don’t like to go to the clubs because of the smoke, but they still like to drink and enjoy themselves.”

The Comedy Nite, which opened in Oceanside in June a year ago, has positioned itself as the “king of North County comedy,” owner Pierre Turgeon said.

“My wife and I felt the North County was growing,” he said. “We felt the North County could support a full-time comedy club, and we would be far enough away we wouldn’t be in competition with the other clubs.”

The nearly year-old Comedy Isle at the Bahia Resort Hotel on Mission Bay books a variety of acts including comics, magicians, hypnotists, and musical comics.

“Most comedy clubs are going with straight stand-up comics, and I’m finding out novelty is working for us,” said manager Randy Butler.

Besides the full-time clubs, other entertainment venues such as Humphrey’s, an outdoor venue on Shelter Island, and Smokey’s, a rhythm and blues nightclub in Mission Valley, offer comedy on a periodic basis because it is a good draw, they say.

“Humphrey’s is not primarily a comedy club at all, but I book headline comedians when I get the opportunity to,” said promoter Kenny Weissberg.

“We’re known for booking music, but we do book comedy,” said John Nelson, spokesman for Bill Silva Presents, which is bringing Andrew Dice Clay to the Sports Arena. Clay won’t be the first comic to play the arena either, said an arena spokesman. Eddie Murphy blazed the trail before him.

With the mushrooming of comedy clubs and showcases has come an enormous increase in the number of comics.

“There are so many comics. Everybody wants to get a piece of the pie,” said Improv manager Dave Becky. None of the comics he auditions to emcee his shows goes on with less than three years of experience unless they’re really good.

Getting the stage time to get that kind of experience means paying some dues in some very unglamorous spots, say comics.

“I’ve played everywhere in San Diego,” said Comedy Store manager Fred Burns. And a lot of other cities, from Eureka to Yuma.

“I’ve played lots of bars, lounges, dance places, private parties in living rooms and college rushes,” Burns said. At the Comedy Store he went from taking tickets at the door to answering the phone to assistant manager and finally manager. He honed his skills trying out material during Open Mike Nite for amateurs, and watching and talking to the pros.

Burns, who has been disabled since birth, starts off his routine making fun of his physical condition. He hobbles on stage with the aid of crutches and peers out over the audience through the bright lights. The crowd falls silent at the sight of a handicapped comic, but he soon has them laughing with him.

“I know what you’re thinking--another Elvis impersonator,” he says to break the ice.

Comedy Nite performer Carol Hughes made her debut at The Improv in Los Angeles one fateful Sunday at 5 minutes to midnight.

“I met a woman at a Weight Watcher’s meeting who was a comedian,” Hughes said. “I asked her how to get started, and she said write five funny minutes and go to The Improv.”

At The Improv, they pulled her name out of a champagne bucket, and she went on stage, did her five minutes worth of material, and was hooked--at the age of 40.

“Comedy is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Hughes, who calls herself Mrs. Hughes on stage. “But it is so much fun.”

Hughes’ act is a tongue-in-cheek review of the trials and tribulations of raising children and all the real-life things that have happened to her.

“I had two beautiful daughters and Scooter the Surfer Dude,” Hughes jokes, referring to her son, too. “I knew babies grew into teen-agers. I just thought when I had mine, there would be a cure. Now I’m a grandmother, but I don’t have any jokes about it. They live with us, and it’s not funny.”

On being fat: “I went to the beach, and the lifeguard says, ‘Lady, when are you going home. The tide would like to come in.’ I didn’t think I was that fat,” Hughes tells the crowd, now screaming with laughter.

“Everything in the act is based on truth or is an exaggeration of something that happened to me. That is why the audience can relate,” she said.

Working her way out of the legions of comic wannabees hasn’t been a free ride though. During the eight years since her debut, she worked her way up from coffee shops and discos to the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and an appearance this fall on Fox television’s “My Talk Show.”

She remembers driving for more than eight hours to get to a show and being put up overnight in a room where “you could see light coming through around the door.”

Being a woman in the world of mostly male stand-up comics is not the easiest trail to blaze either.

“People do not want to hear women using bad language,” said Hughes, whose act is clean. “Things that are a problem for women, like PMS, men don’t want to listen to. And, sometimes, when women are being funny, men think they’re complaining.”

“There are as many comedians as life insurance salesmen,” said comic John Padon. He should know. He worked eight years as life insurance salesman before he turned to comedy. Then he tried out his material on amateur nights and sold cars by day. At one point, even his father asked, “are you going to laugh your way through life?” he said.

“I was fortunate that I started in Albuquerque. I had a lot more access to stage time, and I matured quicker. The more you do it, the funnier you get. It’s all experience, and it’s constant learning. Just the first couple of years, you’re trying to figure out what works with an audience.”

He’s perfecting a routine now about America being just one big junkie worried about dealers raising the price of drugs, and having its oil taken away by the Iraqis, Padon said. “I do think we need to find a way to ship oil without spilling it--like the Colombians. Now these guys know how to ship a product. You never see them spilling cocaine,” he jokes.

When he started working professionally as a comic about a year ago, Benny Ricardo took a philosophical attitude toward his new career. In football, “I’ve bombed before 80,000 people, so what’s bombing before 200 to 300 in a nightclub.” But he works hard at writing his material because “once you get up there and your stuff works, it’s an incredible high.”

Because of the sheer number of comedy offerings at clubs and on television and radio, audiences are getting more sophisticated, say both comics and club owners.

“I think the audience is catching on to the generic Yugo, K-Mart and condom jokes,” said comic Padon who has played The Improv and Comedy Isle. “It’s getting more and more demanding to please the audience.”

“The audience has gotten a lot broader; you see all ages,” Improv Manager Becky said. “They’ve gotten more sophisticated. They expect great shows. If you slip in an inferior show, they’ll notice.”

Attitudes toward comedy have also changed since the ‘50s when comic Lenny Bruce shocked the world with his satire, comics, club owners and club goers say. Bruce, repeatedly arrested on obscenity charges, was known for his biting social commentary on bigotry, homosexuality and hypocrisy.

Comics are dealing more freely with sex, and they’re much more explicit, Dayna Miller of San Diego said while at the Comedy Isle for a show recently.

Compared to today, even George Carlin seems laid back, Terri Snow of Mira Mesa said at a recent show at The Improv. “Carlin was raunchy in his day, but he’s mild today.”

But “he’s an old favorite, like an old shoe you don’t want to get rid of yet.”

Today’s shock comics such as Andrew Dice Clay draw mixed reviews from comics, club managers and club goers.

“I think Andrew Dice Clay is funny, but he’s not that original or innovative,” Duncan Fitzgerald of Del Mar said at a show at the Comedy Isle. “Richard Pryor is my all-time favorite.”

With his dirty, anti-female humor, “Andrew Dice Clay is kind of the mud bog comedian of the ‘90s,” comic Padon said. But “I think Dice has very much calculated the size of his audience. He knows what he’s doing.”

Clay says it is a character he’s portraying on stage, comic Mark Brazill said. “I believe it is a character, but I believe you’re responsible for what you create. If Spike Lee wrote a movie that says everything Clay says, everybody would be all over him. You have to at some point take responsibility. I have a problem with the female violence. That is what you ultimately have to be responsible for. People tend to identify and like that character.

“There’s too much hate. There’s just no comparison between him and Lenny Bruce. Bruce was making fun of the racist. He was attacking the racist. Dice is emulating the racist for laughs. It’s a very dangerous character.”

Comedy Store Manager Fred Burns said he expects the trend carrying Clay to shift in a different direction toward more witty comedy. Also, most comedians are trying to convert their acts to television material, Comedy Isle’s Randy Butler said. “You can’t go on (Johnny) Carson and do sex and drug jokes. You’ll never be on the show.”

“It’s easier to throw the “F” word around, and it’s a lot harder to be clever,” said Mrs. Hughes, adding that she prefers a clean and clever act. “Keeping it clean is the only way to make it in the media.”