Violence and community: Inside the Fun Gutter punk comedy shows

By Brett Wachtel

“I like sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as much as the next guy. As long as the sex is with my husband, the drugs are for my cirrhosis, and the rock ‘n’ roll is jazz,” says comedian Claire Pellegrino, igniting one of the biggest laughs of the night at Fun Gutter: a stand-up comedy show with a punk house band.

In front of the stage at the Cobra Club in Bushwick, there are rows of two chairs each, arranged to create an open space for laughter and moshing alike. Live stand-up and live punk are actually not too dissimilar: Both contain equal parts “violence” and “communal participation,” say Fun Gutter’s co-hosts Sasha von Didkovsky, 24, and Bailey Pope, “thirty-something.”

In comedy, the element of violence comes from “not knowing what’s going to happen and… this could go really badly,” says Didkovsky. Pope continues on this thought saying, “It’s like if you saw a tightrope walker with the safety chain on, that’s still cool, but if you saw someone holding just a stick, it’s way better.” That’s the beauty of live stand-up as opposed to seeing it on Netflix or social media because “it’s already been edited and curated before it even hits your eyes.”

Didkovsky and Pope started Fun Gutter in 2021 and were able to quickly gain a strong following through social media and word-of-mouth. Through this following, they’ve booked comedians such as Chris Gethard, Gary Gulman and Sean Patton. Tonight, it’s Shane Torres headlining the show. Talking about being on dating apps, Torres says, “I’m on all of them, your boy here has gotta cast a wide net. I’m not catching a fish with just a spear … in fact, I might need to do the kind of fishing that’s bad for the environment.”

‘Somebody’s shitty basement punk rock show’
The Fun Gutter co-hosts are an unlikely duo. Didkovsky thinks people see the two of them and say, “Sasha probably doesn’t like what Bailey does, and Bailey definitely hates Sasha.” But, it’s their deep respect for the undercurrent of comedy that unites them and gives Fun Gutter the complete spectrum of personality. When they were coming up with the idea for Fun Gutter, Didkovsky says he was inspired by the “Borscht Belt of the ‘20s, but with a punk house band.”

However, setting up Fun Gutter wasn’t easy. Didkovsky says, “There were a lot of comedy venues who were willing to host Fun Gutter, but didn’t have a proper setup for a band.” On the other hand, “many of the venues that did have things like a good sound system and drum kit weren’t willing to host comedy.” They would tell Didkovsky, “comedy loses money” and would make conditions like “you need to hit a bar minimum of $3,000,” an amount that he said most bars would have trouble hitting on any given night. When they came across the Cobra Club, it was a serendipitous encounter.

“It was important for us to find a place that told the same story as what we wanted,” says Pope about choosing the Cobra Club to house the event. “We wanted it to feel like you’re at somebody’s shitty basement punk rock show. It needed to feel grimy like the shows you never forget going to when you were a kid.” The Cobra Club is, according to Pope, “the perfect dive.”

Comedy for everyone
As the crowd begins to file in, a Hispanic hardcore surf-punk band called Depresion Tropical takes the stage. Unlike the music in many comedy venues, this music doesn’t soothe you for a night of tame laughs. Instead, it invigorates the audience and assures the performers that the one thing this room won’t be lacking in is energy. In true punk fashion, they play about 10 songs in 15 minutes. As they retreat to the back part of the stage, Sasha gets up and riffs with the crowd for a bit about how something he has in common with the NYPD is that they both run red lights, he just runs them on Revel scooters. He then transitions to introduce the first comedian of the night, Claire Pellegrino.

The entire comedy spectrum is represented at Fun Gutter. Julio Diaz’s laid back and well-timed punchlines gut the audience as he jokes about his addiction to vaping and says, “but I don’t even think it’s the nicotine, I think it’s the different flavors” which gets a big laugh from the audience. He goes on to poke fun at his size, describing shopping in stores with the biggest sizes. He says he once found a size listed as “6HB,” which the store clerk said means “six human beings.”

Not all comedy is for everyone, but Fun Gutter tries to be. They’re able to blend the “divide,” as Didkovsky says, with Manhattan being the “straight up stand-up professional clubs” and Brooklyn representing the more “alt-y scene with weird kids trying weird shit.”

“So that’s why our lineup is so important, making sure we have a good mix of different kinds of comics,” says Pope.

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The next Fun Gutter show will be held on August 19 with Eddie Pepitone headlining, and if you can’t make that, they have upcoming shows on September 16, October 21, and November 18. Follow @fungutter on Instagram for more information.