Good "alternative" comedy open mics in L.A.?

[johnnyhaggis 63]

Hey - not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask this (if not, please suggest a better place!) but can anyone recommend good comedy open mics in L.A.? I hate to say "alternative" because that doesn't mean anything anymore (if it ever did) but I mean places where a little weirdness is welcome, where the audience isn't all meatheads, or rich people who go to Barbara Streisand concenrts, and where the comedians are doing more interesting stuff than the usual girlfriend/boyfriend, penis, self-centered gender/ethnic identity/body type jokes (or at least are doing those themes in an interesting way) - i.e. a place where you'd find Comedy Bang Bang guest types.

 

Is there an area of the city that's got more of this sort of scene than somewhere else, or do you have to travel all around the city to go to the relevant venues?

 

I know UCB has a lot of great people doing shows there, but their open mic is only once a month, and limited spots.

 

Basically, I'm going to L.A. for two months, and I'd like to be able to do open mics a few times a week in front of weirdness-capable audiences, and if they would be geographically close to eachother that'd be awesome, though I don't expect that's the case in the Sprawling City. I'm also going to hopefully be taking UCB course(s).

 

Someone told me I should go live in Silver Lake because there are a couple of open mics there, you can live there without a car, and the people there are smart and open minded - but then someone else told me that it's a far away suburb and the comedy scene there isn't anything interesting...

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated,

 

Thanks

[denimgremlin 1179]

try the Nerdist open mic at Meltdown comics. I've not done a ton of open mics so far in LA so i'm sure there's tons of others i'm un aware of, but I've gotten good reactions there for weird bits that bombed at regular comedy clubs. it's a good time even if you don't get a chance to go up, I've seen great stand ups there and the crowd is full of weird nerds.

[johnnyhaggis 63]

Cool, thanks, I didn't realize they had an open mic - that goes on my list - other ones I have written down as potentially interesting are

 

Palace Restaurant in Los Feliz

Westwood Berw Co

Spot Cafe

Silverlake Lounge

 

UCB has one but it's once a month and only 10 spots

[denimgremlin 1179]

if I'm not mistaken the open mic at the spot cafe is no longer going on, i think its still listed on some sites but i went there a few months back and they told me it had stopped.

[johnnyhaggis 63]

Hey denimgremlin and anyone else who end up coming upon this... so I've been in L.A. for a little more than two weeks now, and from what I can tell, Nerdist Open Mic is the ONLY good open mic in town! I've been really surprised. The open mic scene here is excruciatingly awful. Audiences are all comics, they're really young, tend to be not very good, and also have no taste for or awareness of "alternative" type stuff. I was speaking to some people who were waiting to go up, and even though L.A. is comedy Mecca right now and we have every genius comedian living in this city and doing shows for $5 every night, most of these people had never heard of Mara Bamford, Tig Notaro, Natasha Leggero, Jason Mantzoukas, PAul Scheer, Anthony Jeselnik... I would see the same 30 people at all of these open mics, and I'd never see any of those people at UCB shows or other cheap amazing shows.

 

Nerdmelt had also 100% comics in the audience, and only like 15 hang around to listen to other comedians, but they tended to be older, in general they were all decent to very good, and they were aware of the alt comedy scene, and went to the Meltdown show with Kumail Nanjiani for example. Got a very good reaction there, but just made everyone confused and uncomforable at other places... It's the only place that was at all worth going to. The other places are only good if you have a style like Seinfeld, AND you want to practice getting dead silence so you can work up your balls of steel.

 

The bad thing about nerdmelt is it's a limited space lottery, so you only have like a 1/3 chance of going up. The hosts also talk extremely loudly in an open room while people do their sets, which is incredibly obnoxious and distracting for the audience, but I couldn't hear it when I went up, because the mic is loud.

 

Hollywood Hotel thursdays is supposed to be another good one, but I haven't been able to check that one out yet, will do so this week.

 

UCB has an open mic, and the auience is probably ideal, but it's only once a month and you have like a 1/10 chance of getting a spot.

 

THe comedy scene here is just amazing. For $8 I saw Kirsten Schaal ,Rhys D'Arby, Jon Daly (as Mall McCarntey who made me piss myself) and 5 other excellent comedians I'd never heard of before. Every night, killer shows with amazing talent for $5. Saw Jeselnik, Scheer, Mantzoukas, Bamford, Leggero, Doug Benson, Jack McBreyer, Seth Morris, and tons of others I hadn't heard of, often several in a show, always $5-10. Lots of shows with young unknowns, always excellent.

 

But open mic scene is just terrible. Worse than back home, which is a shocker, cause we have a tiny scene there. Seems like the only way to play in front of an audience, or hopefully an alt friendly audience is make friends with people and eventually someone might see something you did on line, or invite you to a little weekly event, or something.