When I worked at Ha! Comedy club I had to bark to get my stage time by handing out flyers in Times Square. It is hard to believe that at one point the people handing out flyers or selling tickets to comedy clubs were actual comics doing it for stage time, but it is true. Now it has become a profession.

Times Square has been called the center of the universe, and with good reason. You have probably been there, so has your friend, if you know someone who has never been there, odds are that they will at one point or another and someone will ask them “do you like comedy?”

Times Square is awash with people. It is the bright lights-big city that people think of when they think of a big city with bright lights. It is beyond compare in it’s majesty, it’s opulence, size, scope and audacity for even existing. In the early 2000’s, Times Square had been cleaned up to the point it was tourist friendly but had not become the outside pedestrian mall it is today. Back then it still had it’s old Coke sign, not the digital monstrosity they have now. Cars and taxi’s could still speed down 7th avenue blaring their horns at people to get out of the way. It wasn’t much but there was still a sense of danger in Times Square. People from all over the world would come by with a “this was New York, you can do anything” attitude. Taxis would try to beat the pedestrian’s crossing the street, law enforcement would ride their horses up and down the block directing traffic, helping people and cursing up a storm. This mix of humanity was chaos in motion. 50,000 people going in 50,000 directions with no rules.

Now it is cordoned off, now it is a mall with chairs for people to sit and watch the world go by like they were on a picnic under an old oak tree in a Robert Frost poem. Anyone ever die in a Robert Frost poem? It is every New Yorkers right to bitch and moan about how much Times Square has changed in their lifetime. My father still complains that since it got cleaned up there is not as much crime, prostitution, shell games or sex shops. He refers to them all as “character” though as in “Times Square has no fucking character anymore”. He said this when the first Warner Brothers store went up in the 90’s. My father’s Times Square was a shitstain, mine was clean with shitstains if you knew where to look, now it is just clean.

5-6 PM

Times Square like any living creature had its own ebbs and flows. The start of a typical Ha! shift had me out in the square around 5 PM. Daylight still in the air, at this time it usually consisted of families in the middle of a long day. Hot and sweaty kids would complain about “walking everywhere” and adults would be complaining about “my kids complaining”. Times Square at 5 PM was tired and in need of a rest. Trying to bark at this time was fairly pointless, but you never knew what the result would be. With the first show at 6:30 the usual questions from the tourists would revolve around if the show was “kid friendly”. My usual reply was that there was a lot of swearing but limited nudity, so it was up to their definition of kid friendly.

6-7 PM

The square would really start to pick up in action during this time. Families going to theme restaurants because they didn’t know everyone in NYC ate much later. Street entertainers would start showing and illegal vendors would put out the knock off Prada/Louis Vuitton handbags on sheets for people looking to get a deal. It made a crowded corner more crowded but I figured that they were doing the same thing I was, but without the luxury of a club to go to when done.

If you have never seen a NYC street team perform they are amazing dancers that can do physically amazing things. Don’t get too close though, on more than one occasion I have seen them gather a crowd and start dancing and flipping to music, then they start spinning on their head, then an unsuspecting tourist gets too close and thwack! Sneaker to the head, I am sure that when the street dancers applied for their permits they had to show proof of insurance. I don’t think anyone got seriously hurt but several did have a Nike swoosh imprint for a few days.

7-7:45 PM

The square was pure bedlam at this time. As the hour got later you could feel the surge of humanity growing like an incoming tsunami. This was a good time to bark, yes you had people going to shows or dinner but a large majority of people coming to NYC are there to gawk at the city and just wander. Those people were susceptible to my charms. They wanted fate to tell them what to do, and there I was with a flyer in my hand. I once tried to count how many people walked by me during that time. I lost track after 150 in the first minute.

7:45-8:15

Drowning in people, barking was pointless. In addition to the regular throngs, you had large groups running past you trying to get to the start of the Broadway show they had tickets for. “It’s ovah here!” the mom would yell as they tried running down 7th avenue. Then five minutes later, “I knew it was the other way” as they rushed past trying to swim upstream like a salmon. “Then well why didn’t you say something earlier?” the mom would bellow, followed by “kids, stay close….CLOSER!!! Get out of the street!!!”

“But there are less people” the kids would cry in unision.

“Get! Out! Of! The! Street! Now!” Mom would say sternly.

A cab would honk. The cab driver would yell “get out of the street asshole” in an undefinable accent.

“We will never make the start” the father would lament, crying into his hands and wondering where his life and/or vacation had gone wrong.

During this time I just wanted to scream. Everyone just shut the fuck up and have a magical time at the Lion King alright?

8:15-10:00

Calm. Theater goers are all in the theaters, no more people rushing past. Like the ocean between waves. You could take a moment to breathe surrounded by a few thousand people. These were people who wanted to see Time Square itself. No urgency to run anywhere. The location was the destination. During this time it was easy to bark, to strike up conversations with tourists and play tour guide.

I often found myself taking photos of the tourists in front of the TKTS booth. It was with great satisfaction that I would have them all stand together, hold up the camera and yell “gotcha” while turning my back and running a few feet away with their camera. Either no one ever cared enough to give serious chase or their tourist reaction time was slow but no one ever came after me. They all would have smiles when I turned around and took the actual photo, and were a little disappointed that they were not going home with a story about how some guy stole their camera in Time Square.

Now they all just take selfies.

Traditionally New Yorker’s hate tourists, but I found these people were there to see the city and spend their money. Often they were easy to take a flyer and would show up ready for a good time.

10:00-11:00

Bedlam again. Now the tourists are coming out of the theaters, the sidewalks and corners become overcrowded with them trying to figure out how to get back to their hotels. Fifty people would have their hands raised to try and hail the non-existent cabs that would never come. They would all stand in front of each other and jostle for position. The post-theater crowd was worse than the pre-theater crowd in that now they found themselves in a strange place at dark. You could smell fear on some of them.

The opposite was also true. Seeing kids in the square at this time was almost magical. As they exited the theaters singing songs they just heard they see Times Square lit up in all of it’s glory. If wide eyed wonder could be caught in a bottle this is where they would catch it.

Of course they were all too young to come to a comedy club so I never paid much attention to them and since the parents had to get them home, I knew they were not going to take a flyer either. Kids were a barker forcefield that repelled the best of us.

11:00-1:00

The dregs, the drunks, the high school kids who thought this was the “real” New York, the thugs, the drunks, the lost, the found, the drunks. These were the people who populated Times Square at this time. When barking to these people they always asked how much drinks cost at the club, always made an idiotic joke about the two drink minimum.

Usually one would say “I am funny as fuck, how do I get on stage”.

We all have at least one friend who cannot hold their liquor, that when drunk becomes an obnoxious version of themselves but since you have been friends with them for so long you just laugh them off. Now imagine them in that state of mind but in New York FUCKING City, where anything can happen……whooooooooo!!!!!!!! No rules!

Multiply that by 500 and that was Times Square at this time.