This DIY Comedy Show Feels Like an Episode of ‘Girls’ (Non-Derogatory)
With an in-house art gallery, a set from rock band Washer, and a comedy trio that made a smoothie onstage, ACME Revue was like walking into Hannah Horvath’s Brooklyn…in the best possible way.
Entertainment
Hot Mic is a weekly column by Leah Abrams documenting, spotlighting, and reviewing live comedy in NYC.
This week marks 12 years of Lena Dunham’s Girls, a national holiday for annoying, dramatic writers everywhere. I was in eighth grade when the show first premiered and I pirated the pilot episode on my iPod Touch, only to be intimidated by Hannah’s first sex scene with Adam and immediately turn it off. People do it like that? No way, I thought. Up until then, I’d imagined New York exclusively as glamorous. This was my first indication that it wasn’t…just that.
So it was fitting that, this week, I ended up at The Gutter: a bowling alley bar in Williamsburg on the north edge of McCarren Park where the titular Girls celebrate Ray Ploshansky’s election to “community board number eight.” But unlike that episode (“Daddy Issues”), the night I went, there were no surprise engagements or fathers coming out late in life. At least, not that I know of.
Instead, I was there for the ACME Revue, a DIY comedy-variety show hosted monthly by Julia Desmond. With an in-house art gallery from Amy Tidwell, a lineup of performances from some of New York’s best alt-comedians, and a set from the rock band Washer, it felt like walking into an episode of Girls, in the best possible way.
ACME—an acronym for Art, Comedy, Music, End of Show—is a labor of love. Because Desmond is a fellow North Carolina native who moved up here after graduating college during the pandemic, I’ve been hearing about it from friends for years now—and my only regret is taking so long to see it for myself.
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