City Focus:

When veteran comic Bill Word started booking comedy shows at Huntington Beach club Martini Blues in 2001, his largest bookings had been for coffee shops. Barely a year later, he was spearheading the now-renowned Orange County’s Funniest Person contest and packing his weeks with stand-up events of all kinds.

Almost six years later, his tenure at the club came to a close with the fifth annual Funniest Person contest finals, crowning Christopher Heard with the title over about 80 other contestants.

Citing a difference of vision with new ownership, Word is moving on and planning to open his own club. Hopefully, he says, he can open it in Huntington Beach, where he nurtured a community of up-and-coming comics.

“The performances there were really at the top end, especially our last show,” he said. “There was really high quality. That was my choice — I wanted to go out on a high note. It was the perfect way to go.”

Word said a lot of his success depended on real estate. He started out booking Thursday shows to fill a dead night at the blues club, but with that night’s success came the closure of a club next door. As original owner Bobby Cee bought up nearby space and added it to the club, there were plenty of time slots to fill with whatever Word could think of.

Word found he had more room and more times to experiment with, so he tried ideas that were just a pipe dream before. One of them, the constantly- running Laffdown contest, was joined by the annual OC’s Funniest and then the equally ambitious California’s Funniest Female.

“I’m a firm believer that the sky is the limit,” he said.

Unlike most comedy clubs in Orange County, which are large enough venues that they tend to bring in national headliners, Martini Blues had the size and variety of events to allow “open-mic” amateurs to earn their way to veteran status, he said.

“Looking at a beginning comic, they’d start with the open mic on Tuesdays,” he said. “Once a year they go into OC’s Funniest, and between contests they could start working the regular Saturday shows with a paid headliner and advanced beginners doing the opening acts. There was a line where they could move up in the food chain.”

Along with the classes Word would offer his performers, the result turned out to be “a business plan as a development club,” he said.

But that’s only an offshoot of his favorite part of the experience.

“What I really wanted and really felt I did was build a community,” Word said. “We had a support system. In this business, it’s usually dog eat dog. My whole thing is, there’s plenty of opportunity to make people laugh.”

That’s why he thinks Orange County is ideal for that kind of community.

“In L.A. you get that kind of jaded entertainment crowd,” he said. “Everyone’s burnt out. They say, ‘I used to see Richard Pryor in the ’70s. What makes you so worth seeing?’ It’s more genuine here.”