"I stopped going because I was afraid to ride with Rodney."ĭavid Brenner, who went on to be a regular guest host on "The Tonight Show," got his first paying gig at Pips, and his rise to stardom, combined with his loyalty to Mr. "He would literally take both hands off the wheel to write down jokes, pad in the left hand, pencil in the right hand," Ms. Other early performers included Joan Rivers, who, since she had no car, showed up only when Mr. When he took another shot at comedy, he changed his named to Rodney Dangerfield, landed on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and, with "I don't get no respect" as his signature line, became a star. Schultz's named Jacob Cohen who had tried comedy without success as a young man and was working as an aluminum siding salesman. In the lineup, for example, was a childhood friend of Mr. The early rosters were studded with unknowns, though they wouldn't stay that way for long. Schultz had named his German shepherd Pip, after his favorite Dickens character, and when he bought the club, he named it Pips, too. Pips, which occupies a century-old storefront along what was never a very picturesque section of the waterfront, was founded in 1962 by a onetime standup comic from Brooklyn named George Schultz. "And I'd say to him: 'Joey, if you had a couple hundred thousand dollars, I'd do everything in my power to stop you."' "Joey used to always talk about how if he had a couple hundred thousand dollars, he'd buy Pips," Mr. Gay's and his co-host at a Lower East Side open mike, thought it was a bad idea all around. Perhaps most crucially, two decades of bad word of mouth seemed almost impossible to overcome.ĭamion Sammarco, a friend of Mr. A-list comics have long since stopped performing there, and the Jews and Italians who populated the neighborhood when Pips was the center of New York's comedic universe have been replaced by new immigrants, particularly Russians, who are less likely than native English speakers to want to see comedy in English. Though the club has a long history, it is a history few people know or care about. Its remote location, on Emmons Avenue at the end of the Q line, makes it relatively inaccessible, especially for Manhattanites. They bought the club in September, and now they face a formidable challenge. Gay persuaded them to put their money into Pips instead. Torelli had been planning to open a Subway franchise. Rose of Lima Catholic school in Midwood, where the boys grew up. Gay got in touch with Louis Torelli, a restaurant manager who was his best friend in sixth grade at St. "The bluebloods of American comedy started here. Gay, who talks like a raspier version of Joe Pesci and radiates an old-fashioned formality that reminds people of a 1930's film star. "I felt like I was the only Yankee fan, and they were tearing down the stadium," said Mr. Gay, who at 35 is eight years younger than the club, couldn't bear the idea. In its heyday, Pips jump-started the careers of Rodney Dangerfield, David Brenner and Andrew Dice Clay, and was a stomping ground for a string of heavy hitters that included Joan Rivers, Andy Kaufman, Woody Allen, George Carlin, Billy Crystal, Robert Klein, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno.īut in recent years, the club had fallen on hard times, and late last summer, the owner decided to sell it to a man who planned to turn it into a Greek restaurant. Pips, a shoebox of a space sandwiched between Lundy's and Randazzo's, two of the borough's venerable seafood palaces, was born in 1962, just as comedy clubs were coming into their own, and at 43 years old, it is generally regarded as the country's oldest comedy club.
All the elements of his past - growing up with an embarrassing last name in a rough part of Brooklyn, learning to be funny to ward off schoolyard bullies, running a strip club for five years and doing standup for eight - everything had been leading up to this. WHEN Joey Gay heard that Pips Comedy Club in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was for sale, he discovered his life's purpose.