For about the last year I’ve been driving or riding an hour and a half away every Thursday to hit up the closest ‘big’ city with worthwhile open mics. Even when I moved to the Twin Cities and had more options, I would come down. It had become home to me.

I remember when we first started going. It was my roommate, a friend who now lives in Chicago, a friend who doesn’t really do standup any more, and me. We all started out in this crap coffee shop mixed mic full of 19- and 20-year old hipsters. We got 10 minutes apiece – which we absolutely did not deserve – and it almost never went well. Then we started driving a half hour away to another small city that had started up a comedy-only open mic. After a few months, we were killing. Reliably.

So we went in to that first comedy club mic a little cocky. And afterwords, we thought maybe we just had a bad night. Maybe it was a weird audience, maybe they just didn’t get us. A month later we went back and did awful again. And then again a month later. It was almost more demoralizing than the coffee shop mic, because at the coffee shop we could blame the fact that nobody was listening. At the club they were listening, they just didn’t think we were very funny.

We made small gains. We started going more regularly because some of the other comedians were absolutely incredible to watch. Looking back it’s easy to see how we had been killing at a small mic with dirty, shock humor catered to college students (understandable, since we weren’t too far outside of college ourselves). The comedy club’s mic forced us to bring our material up, to strive for more. It showed us what comedians at our level were capable of. It made us want… more.

By the time I moved to the Twin Cities, that club mic had become home. All the comedians I loved were there. Thursdays that summer were a blur of car drives, jokes, and drinking at a nearby rooftop bar for hours. It was one of the better summers of my life.

When I moved back from my little summer vacation, we kept going. I had gotten much better in a short period of time and now had to scrape to get as much done as I could with one mic a week. I was booking gigs occasionally. It was a little more work, but I still felt like I was doing it. Being a comedian.

And then the club closed. There were promises at the time from the owner that he would find a new venue, reopen. I figured it was 50/50 at best. Turns out, cynicism was warranted.

It was sad. The last few weeks were themed mics, culminating with the roast of our long-time host. It was a blast. And a few people were teary-eyed at the end. I kept telling myself that every comedian I’ve listened to on podcasts has a story of the club they started at, and none of those clubs were open anymore. It was always “Yeah I would drive two hours to do five minutes at a mic in this club called the Laughing Lorax, it used to be out on Hwy 92, closed down – god, 15 years ago?…” Having a home club and then losing it, that’s just part of the comedy life cycle. It’s one of those bittersweet experiences that seems to be the privilege of anyone who refuses to quit.

But it wasn’t all bad. My home club had been the only comedy venue in the whole city and held a monopoly on the art form. I know people who were told that if they started an open mic, even on the opposite side of the city, they would be blacklisted. The week before the club shut down, comics from the city were already making plans.

The next week two open mics sprang up, one of them just a block from the old club. Nobody was showing up to watch an open mic, but thanks to a street festival and a beanbag tournament we were slowly snagging an audience. One of the hosts started making plans for a roast battle competition.

I doubt Rome knew the second it was past its Golden Age either. Things were clearly changing, but it all had to seem recoverable. Otherwise why would they have bothered?

Hardly any of the comics from the Twin Cities came to the new mics. To be fair, we’d already been seeing them less at the club before it closed. And a couple of them did join in the new adventure. But for the rest, I understood – why bother invest in a new mic when you have so many more reliable options so much closer to home? Losing them definitely lowered the average quality of comedy at the new mics.

Then the street festival stopped and the audience stopped coming. Then the beanbag tournament stopped and the audience stopped coming. The comics who lived in town weren’t bringing an audience – they’d bring a couple friends, but no one was really pounding the streets, advertising. Which is fine, no one should be expected to. But the audience dwindled. And then some comics stopped making an effort to show up – my roommate hasn’t gone in weeks. I got a second job working politics through the election and have had conflicts. One of the comics we drive up is a teacher and has had conflicts with school in session.

Every week we go up and perform to 7 of the same 11 comics. There will sometimes be a couple people in the back of the bar. If you can get them to listen, you’re lucky. Then we go to the second mic and perform to 6 of the same 12 comics. And the host at the second mic called it this morning; he’s throwing in the towel.

The Golden Age ended forever ago, we just hadn’t seen it. We’ve been sliding backwards for a while. A lot of people are getting rusty, getting worse. I feel like I have. It’s hard to maintain even a dull edge with no audience. There’s no saying that we won’t recover but… well, the odds are stacked against us. So it’s back to the coffee shop mic for me and mine. Darwinism in comedy. The answer has been clear for a while – I need to leave. Return to the Twin Cities. Or quit. Because the last few months have been excruciating.

I won’t quit. I believe if you keep working hard, keep fighting to improve, you’ll always find another Golden Age. I mean, you won’t notice that one until after it’s over either, but it’s out there. Waiting.

And no matter how long it takes, I’m going to find it.

While you’re here, check out my new comedy project, Zero to MCAT.