A Venice Beach Vet Is Packing Up His Laughs : Comedy: His acting career is taking off, so Michael Colyar will end nine years of doing stand-up on the boardwalk, climaxing with a two-hour Labor Day performance.

After nine years of getting Venice Beach audiences to give it up for his comic performances, Michael Colyar is himself giving it up.

Colyar, whose often blue but always topical stand-up routines beachside have inspired both enmity and adulation--and won him some choice acting gigs--will present his last regular performances this weekend from noon to 5 p.m. (“I work up to 5 o’clock because at 5 o’clock, all the white people leave and they take their money,” he jokes.)

The weekend will be climaxed by a two-hour Labor Day farewell performance Monday at 2 p.m., which promises special guests and brand-new material.

“I came (to Los Angeles) to act,” Colyar says. But, his al fresco gig “got so lucrative that here it is, nine years later, and I’m still locked into the comedy.”

Now with his acting career taking off--he has appeared in 11 films and numerous sitcoms--the cash with which tourists favor him are but gravy, though accountants have advised him not to say how much he makes per weekend.

Still, his near-weekly Venice Beach appearances provided a distraction to his acting career. “The reason I don’t think I’ve taken off the way I should take off is that I’ve concentrated so much on comedy that there hasn’t been enough time to dedicate to my craft,” he says. “And so it’s time to wrap it up and do what I came to do.”

Not that getting tourists to yuk it up hasn’t paid off. Robert Townsend gave him his first role, one line, in “Hollywood Shuffle” after catching his act on his regular spot on the boardwalk, where Clubhouse Avenue (which, in reality, is more an alley than an avenue) abuts the ocean.

Subsequent films have included “House Party 3” and “Hot Shots Part Deux” (“I played the black guy,” he jokes), with his just completed effort, “Kangaroo Court,” providing his first chance to really show off his dramatic chops.

“Kangaroo Court” is sort of a Rodney G. King revenge fantasy. Colyar plays a motorist brutalized by a white cop. The cop (defended by an attorney played by Gregory Hines) is in turn kidnaped by the black community and held to stand trial underground, in the realm of black jurists and a black judge.

Despite the inflammatory nature of that film, Colyar has dedicated his comedy to healing the rifts between the races--during his brief set this afternoon, he wears a baseball cap reading, “Eracism”--and attacking societal ills, from drug abuse to AIDS. Clean for more than five years, Colyar does material about his days as a crack addict, so messed up he staked out his own home and tried to steal his own TV to pawn.

Though Colyar’s act initially met with resistance from the neighborhood because of his use of profanity, his dedication to that same neighborhood and the cause of homelessness has resulted in the City of Venice planning to give him a special award at Monday’s program. When Colyar won $100,000 on “Star Search,” he dedicated half the money to the city’s homeless shelters, and he inaugurated a yearly program to collect food for the homeless during his December performances (he plans to return to Venice for a series of shows this December). Colyar is also preparing a non-profane version of his show, which will present his message for schoolchildren.

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Because of the passion Colyar feels for his causes, an interview with him on the boardwalk comes off more as a series of pronouncements than actual conversation. When he states, “Instead of trying to make a living, I live my making,” he’s doing material that appeared in profiles three years ago.

But this doesn’t diffuse his sincerity. Throughout the interview, Colyar stops to invite passersby--all friends and acquaintances, from cops to surfers--to his final show. And he’s frequently interrupted by fans, who have seen him either on “Star Search” or in “House Party 3” or on one of his other appearances, who tell him how much they appreciate his act. In return, he is unfailingly gracious and appreciative.

It wasn’t that long ago that Colyar was a struggling artist on the streets of Chicago. Friends introduced him to the concept of street performance--”I thought, what a lowdown thing to do, stand around begging for money”--and then, on his fourth day, he garnered $84 for four hours’ work. “I said, ‘I could try this,’ ” he recalls with a smile.

He soon left the winters of Chicago for the eternal sun of Venice Beach, and was making enough to support himself and his son (he has since remarried).

His stature as “the only comedian who does drive-by comedy” has made him both beloved and the target of attacks on the boardwalk, Colyar says. He has a stalker who once hired a plane to fly over the beach with a quixotic message to him, he reports, and, has been confronted by other surly, even potentially dangerous, observers.

“So many people have seen me on so many TV shows, they know the comedy I do,” he says. “So they try to challenge me. Then they find out that they can’t win. They have two or three funny things to say, and I have about 400 funny things to say about them. So they dig a hole they can’t get out of and their egos are hurt, and they get upset and they threaten me and stuff. I don’t need that. I came here to have fun.”

One audience member even drew a knife on him, Colyar recalls. “I picked up the chair I stand on and charged him and pushed him out of the crowd,” he says, adding that policemen happened to be nearby to make the arrest.

Nonetheless, Colyar will miss being part of the funkiness that has historically defined Venice Beach. “I started missing it from the moment we made the decision,” he says. “There isn’t anything like Venice Beach. There’s always some craziness going on. It’s wonderful, sometimes it’s dangerous, but it’s always spontaneous. . . .

“There’s a guy who bills himself as the World’s Greatest Wino. He doesn’t care if you give him a quarter or two, he tells you, ‘I want to get a taste.’ Yet he’s still a remarkable cat.

“There are phenomenal things out here, and there’s nonsense out here,” he concludes. “Beyond that, there’s the beauty and the essence of God. You stand here and look at the ocean, you look at the sunset. It’s the most incredible thing.”