Secrets of the Oldest Comedy Club Barker on Macdougal Street

“We’re brother and sister,” the woman spat.

The venom didn’t bother Burdette, who goes by Comedy Pete. He belongs to a community most outsiders loathe or pity. Burdette is a comedy barker, someone who peddles tickets to stand-up shows that struggle to attract a crowd.

Out-and-out hawkers bark for quick cash. Aspiring comics do it for a smaller cut of sales plus, crucially, stage time. Burdette belongs to the latter group. At 48, he is almost surely the oldest barker on Macdougal Street still holding on to the dream of becoming a professional comedian.

And if he is not yet a fixture inside the better comedy clubs, he’s something of a celebrity on the sidewalks out front.

“He’s the last living shtick,” said Bobby Lockwood, 28, a fellow barker.

Burdette adopted the old-school style he’s known for several years ago, when he learned that Danny Kaye, the midcentury comic famous for appearing in movies as a hapless dreamer, worked in the Catskills as a tummler, the Yiddish term for barker.

“I was like, ‘That’s what I try to be out here, like if Danny Kaye back then were a tummler in the 21st century,’” Burdette said. “It flipped a switch. I became a different barker.”

Burdette occupies the center of what might be called a barking boom, at least in Greenwich Village. On weekend nights, as many as eight barkers gather on a stretch of Macdougal Street extending just over a block. This area, oddly, does not include any of the clubs they work for.

But the Comedy Cellar, the neighborhood’s most famous venue, lies in the middle of it. For barkers, that means overflow traffic.

“They just surround us and literally try to pick off our customers,” said Noam Dworman, owner of the Comedy Cellar.

As a result, he has long banned comics who perform at the Cellar from appearing at other clubs on Macdougal.

“If a barker can say, ‘So-and-so’s playing here, but he’s also playing here, and we’ll give you a half-price cover,’ that’s too far,” Dworman said.

The owners of the Grisly Pear and the Greenwich Village Comedy Club, the two venues on Macdougal that use barkers, defended their right to sell tickets on busy street corners, saying their salespeople were sufficiently far from the Cellar.

Barkers themselves fret about what fighting among club owners might mean for them. These amateurs are the least powerful constituency in New York comedy.

A barker earns around $10 to $15 for every ticket sold. Some nights, after hours of work, barkers fail to sell any tickets, meaning they don’t earn a cent. And when barkers do their stand-up, it’s often in an undesirable slot.

“Put somebody who’s weak sauce just before the headliner, so the headliner’s really dynamite,” said Burdette. “That’s the conventional wisdom.”

Needless to say, successful comedians don’t bark. Stigma surrounds the word itself. “It’s demeaning when people say ‘bark,’ ” said Gabe Dorado, a producer at the Grisly Pear. “I say ‘selling tickets.’ ”

Some barkers declined to speak on the record, saying they did not want to be publicly identified as barkers.

Yet spending time with barkers also shows that the job provides training and a bit of recognition, along with other, less predictable benefits — a rowdy good time, hard-won wisdom.

There have long been comedy clubs hawking tickets around Macdougal Street. Barkers began to grow in number and geographic spread in 2012, when the Greenwich Village Comedy Club opened and sent its street team to strategic locations along the block.

Back then, the Grisly Pear hosted everything from bluegrass concerts to belly dancing. In 2017, HBO released the show “Crashing,” starring comedian Pete Holmes as a barker who does stand-up at the Pear.

The show inspired the Grisly Pear to run a full-time comedy club in its backroom.

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Some veteran comedians describe barking as a rite of passage. Sarah Silverman and Holmes, also the creator of “Crashing,” both barked when they were getting started. Chatting on Macdougal Street one night between sets at the Comedy Cellar and the Village Underground, comics Colin Quinn and Rachel Feinstein said that all their peers used to bark.

“The one thing comedians are not allowed to be is uncomfortable,” Quinn said. “They can hate you, but they can’t feel sorry for you. I feel like barking helps you in that way.”

Feinstein had a bleaker memory of her barking days. “I remember hating myself,” she said.

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Burdette’s age might seem to make his barking especially pitiable. Yet his peers share a cheerful sense of his place as a fixture of Macdougal Street.

“When I see his Hawaiian shirt, I know I’m home,” said AMarie Castillo, a comic who produces shows at the Grisly Pear.

“He just has this little place in this big world, and everyone knows him,” said Ali Kolbert, a young comedian. “He is the only face that I see every single night that I’m on this street. It’s like, Artichoke Pizza, the Comedy Cellar, Comedy Pete.”

Kolbert and Gary Miller, the owner of the Grisly Pear, guessed that Burdette has barked for maybe 20 years. “He’s barked more than anyone else,” said comic Josh Tolentino, 21, who has already moved beyond barking. “He’s very old.”

Actually, Burdette has only been barking since early 2014, when he began to overcome decades of resignation and shyness to pursue his dream of becoming a professional comic.

Like his idol, Rodney Dangerfield, Burdette has learned how to relish getting no respect.

On a recent night at the Pear, Burdette told the audience he had run into a high school friend who had asked why he never married or had children. “It’s not that I didn’t want it,” Burdette said. “There’s just no room in my parents’ basement.”

Burdette does not have a full-time job and lives with his mother in Glendale, Queens. “I got nothing else,” Burdette said. “So, hey: all in on the comedy. Hollywood or bust.”

Some barkers enjoy the job’s obscurity. Pedestrians don’t look at them too closely. Their bosses do not monitor them. What would normally make barkers stand out — their loudness, their pushiness — blends them in to the carnival of a night out on Macdougal. In a moment, they can change the type of good time they’re selling. One barker can direct inquisitive passersby to a reliable weed dealer.

Rick Dwoskin, a veteran of the scene, said he likes barking because he can drink and work at the same time. When someone told him that drinking wasn’t allowed on the street, Dwoskin replied, “Maybe you can’t drink on the street.” He produced a flask of vodka from his pocket.

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The tone of barking can shift quickly from pleading to jeering. On a recent night, two well-dressed white couples ignored the pitch of Steve Francois, who is Haitian. “Yo, Brad, tell Chad, tell Lauren, tell Karen, it’s going to be a fire show,” he called after them.

Francois is considered particularly smooth. He forms insides jokes with potential customers. He has tips for picking up women while barking: Look out for small groups. The 10 o’clock show is ideal. Francois claims to hook up with two or three women he meets on the street every month.

Female barkers seem less enthusiastic about romantic opportunities. “You have to deal with a lot of, ‘You’re so pretty,’” said Linette Palladino, a frequent presence on Macdougal. “They want to flirt with you but have no intention of buying a ticket.”

On a recent night, hardly a moment went by without someone engaging Palladino in a long conversation. “So, what’s the vibe of your stand-up?” asked one young man.

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In recent months, Burdette has found some hope in barking. The Grisly Pear hung a photograph of him in its theater. Someone stopped him in a subway station raving about his act and asked for a selfie.

“I get a little, minor taste of what it would be like — fame,” he said.

But there’s one thing about barking Burdette cannot stand. On a recent night, he yelled out to the crowd on Macdougal, “How about a comedy show guys, what do you say?” A woman replied: “No thanks. My life is already a comedy show.”

Burdette grimaced. He hears this response every night he barks. “‘Oh, my life is a comedy,’ or ‘I am the comedy show.’ It’s depressing,” he said. “You get a little study of humankind.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

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Secrets of the Oldest Comedy Club Barker on Macdougal Street

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