Forty years ago, on Sunday, December 6, 1981, five comedians left Buffalo, NY for Boston. We were a mostly-terrible improv group with delusions of comedic adequacy. Our group was called Funny You Should Ask, and we introduced Buffalo to improv comedy (an empty boast, like claiming to have fed an Inuit tribe their first Krispy Kreme donuts). A dozen New England universities were foolish enough to hire us for one-night-only gigs, so my friends claimed it would be somehow more advantageous if our group moved to Boston.
That made no sense to me. I didn’t want to go. Dumb idea. Absurdly risky. We’d never even visited Boston. Didn’t know anyone there.
My improv companions - Rich Ceisler, Phil Lebovits, Kitty Lavery, and Jeff Lubick - all insisted that we go anyway, and they needled me until I caved in. On December 6, 1981, we loaded a rental truck with our meager possessions and departed Buffalo.
When we reached Boston that evening, the shitshow began. Jeff had repeatedly assured me prior to our arrival that his cousin could accommodate us until we found housing. Yet the cousin was surprised to find five of us, not just Jeff. We were equally surprised to see that he had a wife and newborn baby - in a condo the size of walk-in closet. The couple graciously allowed us to stay, and the five of us slept on their living room floor.
Boston rents were double what we paid in Buffalo and we were financially unprepared. To raise cash, we sold our personal property, mostly undesirable junk, out of the back of the rental truck - parked on a street corner on Commonwealth Avenue - while snow fell. Even so, we had trouble finding affordable housing.
My earlier cynicism about moving to Boston proved prophetic. Returning to Buffalo was discussed. Not by me, though. I could’ve boasted ‘I told you so.’ But I didn’t. Turning back was surrender, and I was determined not to give up.
So, Phil and I met a landlord in the suburb of Somerville who we somehow cajoled into a lease. Poor bastard.
Within mere days of moving in to our new digs, we met then-unknown comedian Bob Goldthwait at the Ding Ho Chinese Restaurant and Comedy Club (yes, a real place; long gone but still remembered for its great comedians and inedible Chinese food). Bob needed a place to stay, like right away, and he moved in with us that very night. Befriending him helped set me on the path to where I am now.
Our improv group flunked out of the college circuit within six months, and we disbanded. But I broke into the Boston standup comedy scene as a solo act and doors of opportunity opened for me. Within the decade, I moved west to San Francisco, met and married my wife, and found my destiny. But that insanely risky gambit of relocating to Boston was the catalyst.
So to Phil, Kitty, Jeff, and the late Rich Ceisler, thank you for dragging me kicking and screaming into my future. It proved to be one of the best moves of my life.
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