Belongs in a Bar

A comedian walking onto a stage and opening with “I hope you like jokes” is usually a warning sign, but Dwight York is being literal. He does not tell stories, he does not pause to let the audience catch up, and he does not do crowd work. Instead, he fires off rapid-fire, slightly sordid one-liners that feel like they were written on the back of cocktail napkins. Filmed on a freezing February night inside Johnnie’s Bar in River Falls, Wisconsin, the 2018 special is a showcase for a comic who thrives in the smoky, low-ceilinged rooms where he built his career.\n\nReleased by Stand Up! Records, the set captures York at a point when he was already a seasoned road warrior—a veteran of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally’s Buffalo Chip and a personal favorite of Colin Quinn. The jokes cover everything from a door-to-door security system salesman who leaves brochures on the kitchen table when no one is home, to a drug test that came back negative, meaning his dealer has some explaining to do. He even touches on a brief stint of homelessness, which he hid by sleeping on the sidewalk in front of a Ticketmaster. The show wraps up with York picking up a guitar for a brief, dirty blues song made up entirely of more one-liners, proving that he knows exactly who his audience is and what they want out of a night at the bar.