Adam Ferrara bounces between coasts these days, but says there’s no contest as to where he prefers to do stand-up. “I’m a better comic in New York — there’s more energy to draw from,” says the comedian and actor (“Rescue Me,” “Top Gear US”). Born 53 years ago in Queens, Ferrara grew up in Huntington, LI, and has the accent to prove it. Check him out Friday and Saturday nights [Sept. 20 and 21] at the Gotham Comedy Club, where he’ll be recording a follow-up to 2018’s comedy hit, “Unconditional.” He tells The Post where you might find him and his wife, Alex, when they leave their Santa Monica, Calif., home to hang in his old Village apartment.
On weekends, I like to start the day slowwww-ly. I’ll get up and bring my wife coffee, because I’m on the road a lot, so when I’m home, I like to make it nice for her. Plus, I’m Catholic, so I have a lot of guilt.
Then we’ll walk. Sometimes we go up to Strawberry Fields and sit there. I like to walk up Fifth Avenue and turn up on 14th Street to get that hit of the Empire State building. Eventually, you gotta make your way over to Seventh and get up to 72nd and the Dakota’s on your left. We’ll sit in Strawberry Fields and watch the people, and I’ll try to make my wife laugh, thinking of dialogue for everybody. That’s how I got the idea for my podcast, “30 minutes you’ll never have back again.”
I like to eat at John’s of 12th Street. It’s an old-school Italian restaurant that has a great linguine with white clam sauce. It’s also got that heavy, dark wood furniture, white tablecloths and it’s dimly lit — I get the vibe of when I was a kid at my grandmother’s house. She had a brownstone in New York. Everyone left for Long Island, and all the kids like me wanted to get back to the city.
Ferrara Bakery, which we’re not related to, has got a great cannoli. When I [visit] my mother, who’s way out east on Long Island, I’ll buy a box of pastries. I gotta put them in the trunk, or I’ll eat them before I get there. Sometimes I’ll go shoot a couple of racks of pool at Amsterdam [Billiards Club]. I’ll keep my headphones in and I’ll shoot by myself or pick up a game. A couple of comics shoot there — Tom Ryan’s a great pool player. So was Jerry Orbach. I did an episode of “Law and Order” with him and we spent an afternoon talking about pool. At Amsterdam, I always get a table where I can put my notebook. Whatever’s babbling in my head, I’ll go and write down. The muse needs to be heard! You can’t shut it off.