May 2- 8, 2002

cover story

NO LAUGHING MATTER

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

JOKES, JABS, AND JEALOUSIES: It's mean behind the scenes of Philadelphia's comedy world.

by Jon Hart

With his sumo-wrestler physique, comedian/comedy promoter/pickle entrepreneur Steve Slutsky makes a grand entrance to his comedy gigs on a tricycle that has a toilet bowl for a seat. If you’ve been around Philly anytime during the past quarter-century, you’ve probably seen Slutsky’s shtick -- in one form or another. Slutsky, better known as Pickle Man, Pickle for short, will perform anywhere, anytime, to anyone -- whether you like it or not. No microphone, no stage or dress code required. More out of line than Main Line, Pickle brings comedy directly to the common man. Go ahead, call him small-time, but he specializes in getting big laughs from small-time people -- sometimes in very, very small places. “If the caller had enough change, the Pickle Man would book a show in a phone book,” cracks one comic.

To get a laugh, Pickle plays the foul-mouthed dirty uncle or the Philly fool. No question about it, though, Pickle is no fool. To generate comedy business, he's hustling, making phone calls, aggressively chasing anything faintly resembling a lead. "I am Mr. Comedy in Philadelphia," Pickle proudly proclaims.

Oh yeah, this 53-year-old sells some damn good pickles in the process.

Photo By Christina M. Felice

But some of Pickle's rivals on the comedy circuit are not buying Pickle's product or act -- whatsoever. In the cutthroat Philly comedy kingdom, most comedy bookers act like lords, treating their rooms like fiefdoms while battling over cash-strapped customers and serflike, poorly paid comics.

"It's disgusting. There's been a war on in Philadelphia between bookers for 25 years," grouses one local veteran comic. "They don't believe in free enterprise in the U.S.A. It's not how funny you are. It's who you work for. They set up territorial zones." In this world of late-night laughs in smoke-filled, dark rooms, backstabbing and betrayal are the rule.

"They are definitely territorial down there," says New York national headliner Johnny Lampert. "But they are like that everywhere. There's a booker war in Boston. It's the same thing."

Friends are few and enemies are many. Like many of the players on the Philly comedy scene, Pickle has lots of the latter, his most vehement being comedy booker Steve Bix, who owns The Comedy Blast company. Unlike Pickle, who says he is content working the Philly area, the Allentown-based Bix claims that he is headed for the big-time, boasting that he books in 12 states and that his company is one of the fastest-growing entertainment concerns in the country. By the end of the year, he says he expects to book in 16 states and will have a chance to gross half a million dollars in revenue. Over the past decade, Bix has had a serious, sometimes fierce feud with Pickle, who says the imbroglio stems back two decades when Pickle told Bix that he stinks at performing comedy and tricked him, telling him that he was booked at a show that he wasn't. Now, years later, Bix is still livid. He even has a file on the man.

"He has threatened to kill me," says Bix, "because he claims Philly and South Jersey is his territory alone to book comedy." Bix claims that he even went so far as to go to the FBI and report Pickle.

"I never threatened to kill him," responds Pickle. "It's not true." He adds that he has never been contacted by the FBI.

Publicly, Pickle is more reserved in his dislike for Bix. "He's an egotistical maniac who thinks that he controls the comedy world," Pickle says matter-of-factly. "Anybody who is competition, he does not like."

When Bix is asked about the rumor that he refuses to use Pickle's comics, he offers this Clintonesque response: "I use professional comics from all over the country. My comics have a choice to work for anyone they want, but they generally choose to work for me for a couple of reasons: Number one, my pay scale is higher than anyone on the East Coast. Number two, my rooms are run much more professionally and none of them are corner bars."

Not everyone, though, is convinced that Bix is as hot as he thinks. "He's second-rate," comments a comic. "He books firehouses and old-age homes."

Another veteran Philly comic laughs at Bix's sliding pay scale. "You gotta count heads to see what you're gonna get paid. I used to count the busboy," he rants. "Sliding scale -- yeah, the fat fuck should get on the scale."

Few, however, argue about the quality of Pickle's special brand of super-hot pickles, Zayda's ("Jewish word for å,'" says Pickle), which he sells everywhere from bodegas to go-go bars and have won over a solid following. "They are real popular. They're crunchy. They don't get soggy," says Ed Swiacki, the owner of Stan and Ed Swiacki Meats, a Port Richmond kielbasa shop. "It's a good product, but Steve sells himself too."

In fact, Slutsky turns deliveries into sometimes-hilarious, always-ridiculous performances. "Please help!" Slutsky yells as he waddles into one of his establishments. "My mother needs breast implants!" Invariably, ginned-up geriatric gents look up from their SportsCenter rerun to catch the sight of this jacked-up Jewish pickle preacher. "Eat the heat! Poop there it is!" yells Pickle. "Make your next bowel movement a memorable one!" he shouts before breaking into song. "A pickle in the middle and the mustard on top," croons Pickle, whom no one would ever compare to Perry Como. "All the girls say I'm very hot." Invariably, after one of Pickle's ad-hoc performances, a small crowd surrounds his rented Ryder truck waiting for one of his hot pickles or other specialty items.

Pickle also sells three-alarm, super-spicy mustard and horseradish, hot tomatoes, succulent stuffed-pepper shooters with prosciutto and provolone, pepperoni ("I'm not a meat guy," explains Pickle) and the lethal injection, a super-hot wing sauce.

Pickle saves his meatiest performance for his comedy shows, no-frills, one-night engagements at Elks clubs, firehouses and basically any joint that will have him. When he performs, Pickle always does an improvised set. For one recent firehouse show, Pickle dramatically entered the stage in a fireman’s outfit to a standing ovation, something Pickle says he has become quite accustomed to. Pickle also does dead-on impressions of his heroes Rodney Dangerfield (“My real parents committed suicide before I was born”) and Jackie Mason (“I should have been a doctor. The doctor is the only profession a man can tell a woman to take off all her clothes and mail the bill to her husband.”). He says that he brings the house down when he picks on his sometime-squeeze, the very large Latina Esmerelda, with Andrew Dice Clay candor. “She’s into S&M. Yeah, she’s into spaghetti and meatballs,” Pickle rattles off. “When she sweats, marinara comes out -- the fat bitch that she is.”

"He can really command a room," comments veteran Philly comic Ben Kurland, who has been working for Pickle for the past decade.

While Pickle has made an impression behind the mic, he is also making things happen behind the scenes. Pickle books shows for venues without Enron-sized budgets in between pickle stops, taking calls on his cell while using the dashboard of his rented truck as a desk. In addition to comics, Pickle books magicians, ventriloquists, basically anything. If you need a fire eater, Pickle will make it happen. "I enjoy developing talent," says Pickle. "I like giving people a chance -- since no one gave me one."

Before Pickle took his shot behind the mic, he was a mischievous student at Lower Merion High School, Kobe Bryant's alma mater. When he was 15, his mother succumbed to cancer, and Pickle acted out. "We'd moon the principal," recalls Pickle. When he wasn't making mischief, Pickle was picking up the ins and outs of the restaurant trade from his soda-dispenser father. To make extra cash, he waited tables at a deli with an extremely Jewish, cranky clientele. "Instead of asking if everything is OK, I used to say, å anything OK?'"

While he was still in high school, Pickle met his future wife at a Penn-Drexel dance. ("We wanted to hang out with all the college kids," he explains.) After high school, Pickle attended the two-year Peirce College business school in Center City. After getting settled in the restaurant-supply business, he and his new bride, a hairdresser, moved into a split-level in Cherry Hill with "designer furniture."

"We were the youngest couple with a home there," recalls Pickle. "She knew what she wanted." Eventually, Mrs. Pickle gave birth to two children. However, married life in Cherry Hill was not a bowl of cherries. In 1983, the couple split. Instead of therapy, Pickle turned to comedy, performing in front of, well, anyone. No clubs, however, would bite. With no other option, Pickle booked himself. "Can I come back on the weekends and entertain your cocktail crowd?" Pickle solicited to his pickle clientele. Immediately, Pickle says he was hired.

When Pickle wasn't rolling the dice in front of the crowds, he was throwing down the dice in Atlantic City. "It's my only vice," confesses Pickle, who says he does not drink nor do drugs. During those early post-divorce years, Pickle indulged in that singular vice, once hitting A.C. for an entire summer, he says. On June 14, 1987, Pickle says he raked in $247,000 at one point before walking away with $140,000. But Pickle desperately wanted another adrenaline rush: to make people laugh until they cried. To truly win over the crowds, he needed to distinguish himself from the other comics. To do this, he built his now-signature toilet-bowl tricycle, replete with an electronic flush and other sound effects of the total bathroom experience. For audiences, Pickle removed his hairpiece and wiped his sweaty brow with it before reciting his homemade ribald rhymes. In his alter ego character, the Farrellyesque, mentally challenged Gordon Fletcher, Pickle slurred his speech, drooled and did poetry.

"In the summer when it is hot and sultry/ it is no time to commit adultery/ But when the frost is on the pumpkin/ that is the time to do your dunkin'."

Pickle's persistence paid off. In 1993, he was featured on the TV show America's Funniest People, after its producers discovered him on the Atlantic City boardwalk huffing and puffing on his tricycle. ("They didn't give me no fuckin' money for it," says Pickle.) When Pickle wasn't winning over audiences, he was winning over comics to book at his firehouses and other clubs. "He's an honest motherfucker," barks nationally known, always-abrasive comic Lisa Lampanelli, who takes no prisoners with her candor -- on or off stage. "You're not gonna get rich off the Pickle Man. [But] He'll never cheat you. Every dime that he says he's gonna give you, he does. He's the most honest, low-class guy in the business."

Lampert appreciates Pickle for his loyalty. He specifically recalls an incident in which a boisterous, intoxicated audience member announced that she wanted to perform fellatio on her boyfriend in the club, and he egged her on to the audience's delight but to the catering-hall owner's consternation. Pickle, though, did not abandon his act to the owner's wrath. "Pickle defended me. He stood by me and told me how great it was," recalls Lampert, who says that comics are of a certain breed that would work for bin Laden if they booked him. "As people walked out, he kept sticking out his thick thumb and kept saying, å is the best act that has ever been here, right?'"

Photo By Michael T. Regan

Another veteran comic likes Pickle -- but not that much. "Out of all of them, he's the nicest one, and he's an asshole," cracks the comic.

After Bix complained to four police departments, the Hatfield Police got involved.

Detective Keith M. Bell of the Hatfield Police Department said that Bix made complaints in March, April and May 1996, claiming that Pickle was making harassing phone calls to him on his 800 line. However, soon after making the complaints, Bix retracted his complaint. According to the police report, "Bix says the calls may not be coming from Slutsky."

"They never called me," says Pickle. In any event, no charges were filed.

Bix himself has pissed off comics. After a scheduling mix-up, he allegedly let out a litany of profanities. "He called me a fuckin' retard," says a comic. "He told me I'll never work in Lehigh Valley again."

"I'm devastated," says the comic. "I can only hope that it does not hurt me in the Susquehanna region."

Joy Little, who runs Comedy Works out of Georgine's restaurant in West Bristol and never aspired to be a stand-up, is not too fond of Pickle either, whom she refers to as a "fly-by-night" booker. "I don't like people who play games," comments Little, who says she is trying to bring some class back to comedy, including cleaner material and a dress code. "There are certain newcomers that have come in and are not respective of the old owners." Little says that she became particularly perturbed with Pickle when he stole a church that was one of her clients. "He was talking to the priest," recalls Little. "He'll undercut you so much that they have no choice but to use him. It has happened a number of times. It's almost like he has a radar detector to where shows are going on."

“I have not spoken to her in 12 years. I never went out and stole a church from her,” says Pickle. “They called me for a price. Is it stealing or fair business trade?”

Comedy Cabaret owner Andy Scarpati, who is arguably the king of comedy in Philly, talks about his six rooms as if they were the Taj Mahal. He offers theatrical curtains, a backdrop and stage lights, among other amenities. “It’s not a restaurant where you get a mic from Radio Shack and put a comic on in the corner and call it a comedy club and charge 15 bucks,” says Scarpati smugly. “Everything is done in a professional manner. There’s a reason I’ve been doing this for so long.” When it comes to Pickle, he simply dismisses him. “He’s a nonentity,” scoffs Scarpati, a smooth-as-silk former schoolteacher who booked Eddie Murphy, Roseanne and Ray Romano when they were nobodies during his his 20-plus-year career. “Do you see any of his shows listed in the paper? I don’t know him. I really don’t. He attempts to do comedy shows, that’s all I really know.”

Like many, if not all, on the scene, Pickle respects Scarpati's business savvy, but says he thinks that he could afford to be more generous with his acts. "He don't pay the comedians much. He figures he's offering you a stage to play with good lighting, sound, good window dressing, a major comedy-club atmosphere," says Pickle. "He can afford to pay these comedians more than I'm paying them, if you want to know the truth."

A booker who spoke on condition of anonymity says that Scarpati, who also performs a hypnosis act, is just plain cheap. One Philly comic goes a step further. "He's the cheapest clown in the world," cracks the comic. "He must be a proctologist because he's a fuckin' asshole."

Scarpati claims that he pays headliners anywhere from $100 to $300 a show, depending on the act, and explains that low wages are the price to pay for being an "artist." One comic in the know claims that Scarpati does not go over $200 -- and rarely even goes there. "Andy's a sweet-talker," comments the comic. "But he won't reach into his pocket."

One comic strongly believes that Scarpati is the worst of the bunch because his restrictive rules forbid comics, specifically beginners, to work for other clubs. "He has held back the development of many comics with his stupid-ass rules of not being able to perform near his clubs," recalls one comic.

Bix believes that he should be anointed the new king of comedy in Philly. “I’m far bigger than [Scarpati] is,” boasts Bix.

Meanwhile, veteran Philly comic Mary Frances Connelly, who has worked for 16 years for Scarpati, has no complaints with her employer. "His shows are always run right. They know what they're doing," she says. "The pay is OK to really good. The pay is getting better again."

Photo By Michael T. Regan

While Pickle tries to remain above the cesspool of sour feelings, he has a particular distaste for comedy booker Dolly Garber, who was the former “Celebrity Chatterbox” for WPEN. Seven or eight years ago, Garber approached Pickle about doing stand-up. Pickle says he did not think Garber had a funny bone in her body, but he gave her a shot. “I always found room on stage for her to improve on her act,” says Pickle. Then, Pickle claims that Garber, whom he once considered a good friend, turned around and stole his booking gig at the Spaghetti Warehouse. “I hate her guts,” says Pickle emphatically. “She fucked me.”

Garber, a 54-year-old handicapped woman, claims that Pickle dropped Spaghetti Warehouse when the restaurant told him to get insurance, and she picked up the business by default. “He can be extremely intimidating,” says Garber.

"Dolly was calling me every day crying," chimes in Bix. "She could not handle the threats."

Pickle denies it. "It's not true," he says. "I'm not intimidating at all."

"Pickle's cool," says one comic. "He would never hurt anyone."

"She's a yenta," sighs another comic. "She calls me 30 times a week to tell me what the Pickle Man did to her."

Garber adds that Pickle has badmouthed her to clubs, as well as comics, and that he laid down the law: Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware is Pickle territory, and it's off-limits.

“I don’t know what clubs she’s talking about it,” says Pickle. “She only has two rooms.”

Newcomer Garber is not winning too many friends either. Little is not pleased that there are signs that she’s starting a room a mile away from her club.

But Pickle has larger problems than Garber or even the relentless Bix. Last summer, Pickle suffered a minor stroke and was out of commission for a few months. Under doctor’s orders, Pickle, who is diabetic, stayed out of the rented Ryder truck and doled out his spicy delights to his team of drivers from his quiet garage in Northeast Philly.

Now, Pickle is back in the front seat, but he stays there because he suffers from chronic back pain that might require an operation. His helper, a human ox, delivers the goods while Pickle waits and writes receipts. “She has an edge and is as strong as a man,” says Pickle. During happy hour, Pickle leaves his shotgun seat to do a little comedy and pump up business.

Away from comedy and pickles, Pickle watches sports and spends time with his “two or three” girlfriends. “I see different things in each one of them,” says Pickle. Acknowledging that he is a “big” guy, Pickle says that he wins women over with his charm. “I get turned down a lot, but I go after a lot,” says Pickle, who says he doesn’t know if he will ever fall in love again. “Never say never,” he says.

Perhaps Pickle’s only true love is his hometown and its various neighborhoods, small-time shops and people. Besides trips to Florida to visit his father, Pickle rarely leaves his native town. While he often refers to the Carnegie Deli and Brooklyn, he has been to neither, nor has he been out of the country. He says that he would not mind visiting California.

And Pickle seems to like it this way. “I don’t want to be in every big chain with 30-days billing and a computer system and an office with four secretaries,” he says. “You lose your personal touch that way.”

As for his competitors, Pickle wants only peace. “I have nothing bad to say about these people. I wish nobody bad. I wish there did not have to be any hatred in the business,” says Pickle. “Why can’t we all get along?”

But that is not likely to happen.

“Bookers are so protective of their business to the point of paranoia,” says Bix. “I pick my enemies carefully.”