If you think of Eau Claire as a music town, you’re not wrong. But you’re also not paying full attention. You’re like the person who watches that video of basketball players passing the ball around and misses the gorilla walking directly through the frame. The gorilla is comedy. Surprise! Eau Claire is also a comedy town. Big-time. And now you can’t unsee it.

The last time I performed at a comedy open mic at The Plus, I was 16th in the lineup, if that tells you anything about how the scene around here is going. I was 16th and I wasn’t even the last one. I wasn’t supposed to be the last one. We have a designated Last One and if you’ve been to an open mic, you know why.

Open mic at The Plus is on Tuesdays. Tuesday nights are supposed to be boring. They are not. They are probably the best night of the week for me now.

Open mic is where comics do comedy for other comics. It’s an infinity symbol of a system. It’s a dog chasing its own tail. It’s also a school and kind of a club. It’s a comedy gym. You can come watch us lift weights if you want. People do that. It doesn’t cost anything and you get to see how the sausage gets made. You can also sign up and try something yourself. Why not? We’re all here just stuffing meat into casings to see if it holds. No big deal.

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 I started (doing standup) because I needed something all-consuming to think about, and I needed to have fun. And apparently, I needed a raft of new friends and I needed 95% of them to be men. All these wishes came true.

laura buchholz

There are other open mics now, too. Last summer there was Reboot Social on Mondays. Now there’s Growler Guys on Fridays. I think The Lakely has one on Wednesday. Oh Claire Improv teaches standup. And improv. And sketch. They also have shows.

This is an embarrassment of riches for a town the size of Eau Claire. I should not be able to do comedy four nights a week. And yet here we are.

I am very tired.

I am not new to comedy. But I’m somewhat new to standup. I didn’t start doing standup because things were going great in life or because I had a bucket list item to cross off or because I wanted to cut my sleep down by 30%. I started because I needed something all-consuming to think about, and I needed to have fun. And apparently, I needed a raft of new friends and I needed 95% of them to be men. All these wishes came true.

As a lifelong morning person and a years-long morning swimmer, standup makes no sense for me. I’m doing it anyway. And I’m not swimming. For me this has been like waking up one day with four legs and a tail. It’s weird but it’s interesting. I have a tail! Let’s see what that’s like for a while.

Onstage I think I’d classify myself as a recovering smart person. Everyone is different, and that’s what’s fun about this. We’ve got a Kwik Trip manager in a fanny pack. We’ve got a guy in a leather jacket and the attitude to match. We’ve got a manic hyperintelligent political guy. We have a short guy with a memorable maroon T-shirt. We have a guy doing alternative comedy straight from the ’90s. We have a massage therapist with a cold plunge story. We have a woman who has drunk roommates. We have a Mexican dorm cop. We have a guy who paid a jellyfish to sting his girlfriend.

What else could you possibly want?

If open mics test your patience like they don’t mine, there are all the actual Thursday shows at The Plus featuring comics from all over the country. This is every single week and often twice a week. This is because Cullen Ryan is a comedy maniac who brings all these people here.

In short, if you live in Eau Claire and you’re bored, you have no excuse.

Eau Claire, Music Capital of the North? Sure. Fine. OK. Eau Claire, Comedy Capital of the North Not Counting Minnesota Because We Are Aware of Minneapolis? Absolutely.