Friedland might say the same about New York and Boston. Thanks to a tepid economy, inexperienced owners and competition from TV, the comedy-club business is in the dumps. In fact, only some 300 clubs operate now, down from about 400 in 1989, reckons Kate Magill, president of the Professional Comedians Association. One of the nation’s oldest clubs, New York’s Improvisation Comedy Club, recently closed. And suburban clubs, where comedy has boomed in recent years, have closed in droves, too. To survive, many comedy establishments are searching out niche markets. “Just as radio stations have classic rock and oldies, comedy clubs are beginning to specialize in Hispanic comedy, Southern comedy, feminist comedy,” says Brad Greenberg, president of the Comedy Zone, a club chain.

Only a few years ago comedy clubs were the darlings of aspiring entertainment moguls who saw them as an easy business to launch. “People in the roofing business were building clubs,” said Richard Fields, owner of Catch a Rising Star in New York, which is closing this summer and moving across town. With so many clubs, the talent was spread too thin and some people got turned off, Fields said. The proliferation of stand-up comedy on TV has added to the glut. Roughly a dozen comedy shows (“Evening at the Improv” and “Caroline’s Comedy Hour,” to name a couple) have turned up on cable. That’s not to mention frequent specials such as Home Box Office’s “Comedy Hour.” Thus, customers are choosing the couch over the club. Says Kelly Townsend of Catch a Rising Star in Boston: “When it’s 20 below zero and you can sit in your underwear and eat and drink for free and play with your dog at the same time, why would you pay money to go out?”

To lure consumers out of their armchairs, clubs are taking a variety of approaches. The Boston club now favors Whoopi Goldberg-style one-person acts that are more like elaborate comedic sketches than stand-up routines. In Houston, where three clubs have closed in the last year alone, Rushion McDonald and his partners have started the Hip Hop Comedy Stop to target the African-American market. (Most of the club’s seats are filled each night.) Access to Comedy in the San Francisco area even features blind stand-ups and other comedians with disabilities. “There are a lot of disabled people out there and they laugh loud,” said the group’s producer Alexis McGuire, who is dyslexic. Meanwhile, Friedland is doing a little niche marketing, too. “As opposed to your standard, run-of-the-mill, bland, pastel, somnambulistic, traditional stand-up, I’ve pretty much become known as an off-the-wall bizarre act,” he says. Not to mention the best vinyl-seat player in the country.