Rick Aviles

Rick Aviles works a stage like a guy who is used to passing a hat in Washington Square Park. He paces in a sharp suit and a pork pie hat, leaning over the mic stand to drop into a fast, elastic character. He doesn’t just tell jokes. He acts out whole neighborhood scenes. His face stretches into bizarre shapes and his voice is naturally raspy. He uses his whole body to sell a bit, whether he is doing an impression of an elderly Jewish man selling weed from a pushcart or reading a children’s primer with a wildly inappropriate inflection.

He is a snapshot of a very specific era of New York comedy. Before he hosted Showtime at the Apollo in the late 1980s, he built his act on the sidewalks. He brought the pure survival instincts of an outdoor park show into the comedy clubs.

The act is less a tight series of setups and punches and more a chaotic blur of characters. He relies heavily on thick accents and streetwise observations. Sometimes the actual premise of a joke is thin, but he makes it work simply by committing to the voice and throwing himself around the room. He performs with the rhythm of someone who knows an audience will literally walk away if he pauses for too long.

Aviles died in 1995. Most audiences recognize him strictly as the mugger who killed Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost. It is a credit he actively joked about in his standup, completely delighted that Hollywood looked at a fast-talking Puerto Rican comic and decided he was the perfect cinematic murderer.