Guest Blogger: Scorpion Bowls & Punch Lines
Posted by: funny-and-nice / Category: Comedy PostsLucas Lewis Week continues with this piece on Boston’s tradition of comedy in Chinese restaurants. – Nick
By Lucas Lewis
BOSTON — There’s something about Chinese restaurants that appears to bring out the best — and the worst — in Boston comedy.
Back in 1979, it was Barry Crimmins establishing the first complete-time comedy club in town at the now-legendary — and now-defunct — Ding Ho in Inman Square. Today there’s the Comedy Studio at the Hong Kong in Cambridge, possibly the most revered and respected comedy club in New England (see “The Studio”).
But across town, in the shadow of Fenway Park, there’s a lesser-acknowledged venue forging the Chinese comedy connection: Grandma’s Basement, an intimate lounge linked to a Chinese restaurant at the Howard Johnson Hotel. In Boston, as elsewhere, comics congregate around the exhibits they can get on — mostly little showcases and open mics. Grandma’s has the added allure of being a tiny area (a dozen individuals can make the 44-capacity area search full) run by 1 of their very own, and as a result it has become one of the premier hangouts for regional comedians in the past year.
Bar manager and sometimes host Benny Bosh (nee’ Boshnak), who shares booking, hosting and bartending duties with fellow comic Tom Dunlap, is pleased that this happened when it did.
“We’ve grown in recognition at a best rate alongside our — mine and Tom’s — comedy efficiency,” Bosh says. “That is to say, I’m glad it wasn’t this well-liked a year ago, because then I would’ve looked like a full idiot on stage. Now I just type of search like 1.”
The insider cache — along the Chinese restaurant bit — is a marked similarity to the Ding Ho, which Crimmins created to be a comedy clubhouse. “The secret of the Ding was that it was of, by, and for comics,” he wrote in a 1999 retrospective for The Boston Phoenix. “The Ding treated all its acts like stars. Comics did not pay for drinks — ever. They could put anybody they liked on the guest list.”
Grandma’s Basement has other parallels to the Ding Ho, too. On Fridays and Saturdays, Bosh or Dunlap are typically behind the bar, slinging strong — and on occasion free of charge or discounted — drinks to the comics assembled.
A typical weekend show (which is canceled when the Red Sox have a residence game that begins later than 1 p.m.) will feature about ten comedians doing five-7 minutes apiece, even though there are exceptions: Earlier this year, regional comedian Shawn Donovan recorded his very first album, Couple of Mourn, at Grandma’s Basement.
“Donovan’s album recording I nonetheless feel of as one of our greatest successes as a comedy venue,” Bosh says. “He is with out a doubt a single of my preferred comics in Boston and in comedy, and I’m so pleased he got that out there and I was ready to help obtain that.”
As for Chinese restaurants bringing out the worst in Boston comedy? The Ding Ho was as notorious as it was noteworthy, with comedians almost running the location into the ground with their bar tabs and after-hrs shenanigans. Grandma’s Basement hardly ever approaches that level of debauchery, but The Phoenix did not too long ago dub Thursday’s open mic “The Very best Worst Night of Comedy” in Boston for 2011.
Bosch, who hosts most Thursdays, wears the distinction as a badge of honor.
Tags: Blogger, Bowls, guest, Lines, Punch, Scorpion
