Well, shit, folks, where does the time go? I've been keeping myself busy of late with the whole stand-up comedy thing; Tits & Giggles at X is now happening every Thursday, and we’ve started up an open mic at Dixie Tavern on Tuesdays. I’ve also been writing jokes and performing once in a while. It might come as a shock, but I have comedy pretty much always on my mind these days. That's nothing new, though; although I've only been performing stand-up for a few months, I’ve been delivering comedic bits IRL the entire eight years I’ve worked as a bouncer.
The other day, I was talking with a comic I've recently gotten to know, and we started discussing the feeling of magic you feel when you make your audience laugh. It occurred to me that, beyond a mere feeling, comedy could be described as a powerful form of magic, in a literal sense. Jokes, bits, and sets are incantations, spells, and rituals, and a skilled comedic practitioner can cause the audience to lose control over their own bodies; doubled over with laughter, spasming involuntarily, robbed of breath, rivers of tears flowing down red faces, all by speaking some magic words. Magic like that would be a pretty useful tool in the bouncer’s toolbox.
If you think about it, jokes are inherently disarming; a good joke sets up an expectation in the minds of the audience, and an effective punch line undermines that expectation – or clobbers the ever-loving shit out of it with a brick. If you zoom out a little bit on that concept, the fractal holds its shape: as a bouncer, a lot of people walk up to you at the front door, already bracing themselves for you to act like an asshole towards them. In all likelihood, it's nothing personal. Our profession, in general, has a reputation for being assholes—deserved or not—but that's the expectation that's been set up for them. The punchline in this case, is that far from being the asshole they expected, you made them laugh on their way in the door, and in so doing, you've placed them at ease and established a new tone for the rest of their night; you’ve just pumped up their Reeboks on their way inside to spend some dollars (Now your spells are manifesting money as well!).
Pre-pandemic, my friend Joel and I worked the front door at Dixie together, and we made an absolutely classic comedic duo. Joel loved telling really dumb dad jokes any time we had to hold the line; it kept us engaged with the customers waiting to get in, and it made the wait a bit more fun. I naturally assumed the role of comedic straight man, pretending to be annoyed or disgusted any time Joel started a joke, as though I'd heard that same joke so many times that having to hear it again caused me actual physical pain. I was like Bert, enduring with annoyance, Ernie's silly ass bullshit. It was, of course, all a show for the benefit of the customers in line, and it never failed to keep the atmosphere light and fun.
Over the years, I’ve added several bits to my front door repertoire. When circumstances don't call for a pat down, I'll still get customers who turn around and hold their arms out, as a function of muscle memory more than conscious thought. I handle these encounters by telling the dude that if he wants me to put my hands on him like that, it'll cost him extra. Gets a good laugh 99 times out of a hundred. On the flip side of that equation, sometimes I’ll pat a guy down, and the girl walking in with him will jokingly bat her lashes at me and ask if I'm going to pat her down, too (I realize how made up that sounds, but I swear to God it happens all the time). In that scenario, I’ll turn around, put my hands against the wall, assume the position, and suggest instead that I'm going to need her to pat me down before I can let her in. Another reliable laugh, plus I get myself groped for free!
I had a front door bit go viral recently on Instagram, scoring me 5 million views and nearly a half-million likes, in which I fire a confetti gun, and as the glimmering scraps of mylar flutter down around the head of the kid standing in front of me, I drop the bomb that I'm confiscating his fake ID. When we filmed that video, the kid looked for a second like he might swing, but as he began to process the joke of the whole thing, he shook the fists out of his hands, nodded in a grudging acknowledgement that what just went down is pretty fucking hilarious, and walked away. Checking IDs is an abundant source of material for bits. Even my fake ID collection is a bit; I keep them in a binder, organized in card pages, with the cover adorned with Pokémon imagery and the message "Gotta catch 'em all!" My favorite game to stave off boredom is to target the last person in a group, and scrutinize their ID way harder than I did their friends'. I'll look back and forth between the person and the photo on their ID, again and again, furrow my eyebrows, and really sell them my skepticism to the point it makes them nervous, before I laugh and tell them, "I'm just fucking with you. Have fun!" That joke always gets the whole group laughing. I once knew a guy who thought it was hilarious to smell everyone's ID while checking it, as if the sniff test was just a normal part of the ID-check process.
A well-timed joke can effectively de-escalate those dick measuring contests that seem to thrive when the sun goes down and B.A.C. goes up. Interpersonal tension dissipates pretty quickly when everyone involved unexpectedly laughs together. A coworker once told me a story about a customer giving off some body language, hinting that he was ready to get physically belligerent, prompting said coworker to yell at him: "Hey! You do not want to hit me!" This piqued the guy's interest, prompting him to ask, "Oh? Why not?" The coworker responded, "Because that would make me cry, and then you’d feel bad about it!" Once the guy was able to stop laughing and catch his breath, they had a friendly and productive encounter.
Bouncer work is fun for me. It doesn't have to be that serious all the time. Feel free to try some of my bits at whatever door you happen to be working, or come up with a few of your own—either way, look for ways to work a joke or two into your work routine!
Nate Hazen is a writer, bouncer, stand-up comic, and living proof that bald is beautiful. Come talk comedy with him at the Dixie open mic on Tuesdays, or at Tits & Giggles at X on Thursdays.
