The King of Comedy Returns

| 17 Feb 2015 | 02:11

    Albert Owens usually showed up to Washington Square Park in a short-sleeved button down with a casual print, black pants, and glossy tan shoes. His belt buckle probably could have stopped a small caliber bullet. Between this outfit and Albert's lean figure and madman eyes, he didn't look like anyone else who took the circle. Without ever having overheard his act, I (a chess-playing park kid then) figured him for one more wackadoo. I must have seen him doing his thing from a distance a couple dozen times before I had any idea what I was missing.

    It strikes me as strange, now, that I don't remember my first time in his audience. I know that it was sometime in the early 1990s. I remember the sense of discovery-of having found one of those brilliantly haunted intersections of time and space that used to crop up in New York just often enough to keep the appreciative observer fishing. This one was a whopper, to boot-the legend that is Albert Owens, comic king of Washington Square Park for more than 25 years. A few years later, with little public warning save for what seemed to be the same crabby bullshit he'd been spouting for years, Albert picked up and left to travel the world.

    He spent the next decade globetrotting-India, Africa and all about Europe. He's back in New York now, and he's making an unlikely push for commercial success.

    I've called to arrange an interview. and asked him to meet me at Sly Fox, a place I love because it's often empty on a weekend night. This time, though, it's closed at 6 pm on a Friday.

    I wait out front, hoping Albert didn't get there first, see the closed bar, and walk off. A few minutes later I spot him on the street, casting a very different image from what I remember. His hair is cut close, he's dressed conservatively, he's slightly favoring one leg and he doesn't move as aggressively as before. I approach and call out, "Albert." This is met with surprising apprehension. I introduce myself and the tension is abated.

    I suggest Grassroots Tavern, because it's the only other bar in the area that seems even vaguely serviceable. Albert calls it a hellhole and tells me about how a sneak thief ripped him off there. Still, he seems amenable.

    Moreover, even after years of watching his act, I am still quite susceptible to his disconcerting habit of layering half-seriousness upon half-seriousness such that, any way you respond, he chastises you for being led. I chat with him about his hatred for Grassroots as we make our way there.

    When we sit down, I have some questions in mind, but I take it slowly. I know that if I approach with plastic enthusiasm or a barrage of questions, he might just walk off. Sure enough, within minutes, Albert's made it clear that he's the one conducting this interview.

    One of Albert's favorite games is sudden key shifts. He claims he is just misunderstood:

    "All my comedy seems to mystify people," he tells me. It is a sentiment I have seen him express while performing.

    "They don't know where it's coming from. Okay. Never mind. Let's talk about tragedy," he says, and then adds flatly, "Liver transplants."

    "Liver transplants?" I repeat inquisitively.

    He goes on: "Cancer."

    I misunderstand this: "Canceled? You were due for one?"

    "No no no. I was just trying to-I know you like serious subjects. Root canal."

    He pauses. "A broken patella."

    Recalling his new limp, I suspect that he is rattling off an inventory of his own medical problems.

    He goes on: "Triple bypass... Triple by-pass... Triple bypass."

    I try to cut in: "Is this-"

    "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

    "Are you just making this-"

    "I ain't makin' no shit up! Triple bypass is a hospital procedure."

    "Yeah."

    "So why are you puzzled?"

    "Because I don't know if you're-"

    "You don't have to know shit! I can talk about serious things."

    He pauses long and has me exactly where he must have wanted me; I can feel that the muscles in my face, fatigued from previous laughing and smiling, have dropped the corners of my mouth to leave neutrally bared teeth. My line of questioning is shut down now, but Albert lets me writhe for one more beat before adding a final item to the list, almost under his breath, "fucking your cat."

    I laugh and he bangs his mug on the table.

    "See? I'm trying to be serious and-I don't know! I don't know! That's why I gave up comedy."

    Why Albert left the park in the first place is a question to which I never really got a direct answer. On the one hand, he talks about how at times he'd done fantastic two hour shows for audiences in excess of a hundred people and gotten the collection bag back with thirty dollars in it, some of which was in pennies-that it often felt like begging. On the other hand, he openly admits he was obsessed with doing the park act for its own sake. I have my own theory about why he left, or at least what was the tipping point.

    Albert relies, like most performers but to a seemingly greater extent, on the feedback loop of energy between himself and the audience. He hates hecklers with such passion that he seems to resent the audience's enjoyment of anything having to do with them, even his own triumph over them. Indeed, watching Albert put hecklers down was the comedic equivalent of watching Bruce Lee kick bad guy ass. But for him to do this, the energy had to be flowing already.

    Although Albert may remember it differently, the loss of the "festive atmosphere" in Washington Square Park is not something that happened while he was away. The thinning out of people who could appreciate a stand up act in the park came gradually, and in front of him.

    First he began to lose viewers to acrobat troupes, who had always been there on and off as far as I know, but were the obvious choice for the increasing proportion of tourists and newcomers who think like tourists. Acrobatic acts are fun! Big city vacation fun! Albert's act is a small and finely crafted facet of New York. Who the hell wants to see that?

    Eventually, even when the acrobats weren't there, it was 20 or 30 blank faces who had no idea what was going on when Albert took the circle. I can see how, when trying to describe these people off the cuff, Albert came up with the phrase "society in the park," but I don't entirely agree. These blank faces were of an ilk, and have only grown in number since Albert left. With their vision informed largely by the new NYC popular art that reflects their least challenging inclinations (e.g. "Sex and the City"), they sit pleased, not by the Village itself, but by the fact of their occupancy and their own nonchalance about the matter. They are rarely in the park to laugh, especially at anything funny.

    Taking the circle in front of such folk, he might as well have been speaking a foreign language. Sometimes there were enough of us wanting to see him to keep him going until a real audience could gather. Other times, there were no reinforcements within earshot and the faces stayed blank. The tension would just keep building until he'd say, "I'm trying to amuse you, not amaze you." I remembered this line from more successful shows and how it helped break tense or sluggish moments. However, used on a cold fish audience, it was the certain sign that the show was about to end. Albert would eventually walk off, defeated by the tourists.

    Trying to break the ice was Albert's more optimistic approach to a bum crowd, but I think he knew it was a long shot. Another angle of entry was just to open fire with astute and unflattering observations about the members of his non-audience, combined with generalizations apparently selected to gall them. I often laughed in agreement when he singled out and derided a lone ignoramus, but watching Albert tear into people was not my favorite among his show formats.

    For some regulars I knew, the possibility that Albert would become enraged was a draw unto itself. Certainly, I can see how this might satisfy both sadistic and masochistic tendencies: Watching NYU kids, local losers, and the like get trashed, watching Albert get frustrated and angry, and maybe getting yelled at, yourself.

    Friends of mine recall him cursing at kids who ran through the fountain area while he was performing "Sometimes it was funny watching him lay into a confused ten-year-old," one long-time Albert-watcher told me, "and sometimes just sad to see him let off steam about how nobody knew what funny was anymore, certainly not him. And sometimes," he went on, "Albert was either too thirsty or too sated to perform but took the stage anyway."

    Washington Square Park as a show space for independent New Yorkers was already dead by the time Albert stopped showing up. Some of the other performers kept coming, but their shows, too, became less frequent and fell off. Even the acrobats, who were eventually the only act flashy enough to gather a crowd, had maybe one or two more years of regular shows before cutting back to just summer weekends.

    What remained were lame song circles, the NYU drama department, and film students who, with the whole city newly at their disposal, nonetheless shot their ten minute Pulp Fiction knockoffs and girl-from-Connecticut-meets-guy-from-Nebraska stories in the Park.

    This new face of the park is an ugly one or, at best, a blank one. However, it might yet be good for Albert's career. In over 25 years, he proved that, no matter how good your act is, or how many people stop on the street and ask for your autograph (which one woman does during our second meeting), you're not going to hit the big time performing in Washington Square Park.

    For lack of this venue, he's moving into others. I go to the Bitter End to see Albert perform. It turns out he's there to sing a couple of blues songs. This isn't what I came for, but it's a fantastic two song set.

    Albert will be doing a comedy performance incorporating the house band on Sunday, October 30th at the Bitter End. I will be there.