Every five or six years, the Boston stand-up comedy scene sends a new group of young talent out to New York and Los Angeles to give comedy a boost. During the stand-up boom in the '80s, Boston exported Steven Wright, Jay Leno, and Paula Poundstone to shake up the industry. In the early '90s, when the so-called alternative scene was giving stand-up a new edge and attitude, the Boston scene produced Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron, and David Cross. All of them honed their craft in the Hub's clubs before making a bigger impact somewhere else.

Five members of Boston's most recently departed graduating class are now making their presence felt in the New York City scene. Patrick Borelli, Eugene Mirman, Mike Birbiglia, Jon Fisch, and Val Kappa all mingle with top comics such as Garofalo and Jon Stewart as regulars at Eating It at the Luna Lounge, New York City's popular alternative spot.

Fisch also plays the Comic Strip, one of the toughest gigs to land in New York. Birbiglia will tape his first "Late Show With David Letterman" set in the coming weeks. Mirman has done Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," and Borelli, who will tape a spot for the show in August, has performed in sketches on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien." Kappa just taped her second appearance on the Cartoon Network's "Home Movies" animated show.

Naomi Frisch, who coproduces Eating It and who is Comedy Central's director of East Coast talent, says this group of comics is succeeding at least in part because of its work ethic. "There's so many people who consider themselves stand-up comics who, you know, they're doing other things," she says. "They're trying to make a living in other ways. So it's kind of like a side hobby, and they'll do it every once in a while. But a lot of these people are making it. Even if they're not making money from it, they're dedicated to it."

Fisch left Boston to find more stage time, which also means more opportunity to be seen by entertainment-industry scouts. "I still got the feeling when I was in Boston that things kind of picked up around Thursday and ended on Sunday and then `We'll see you again on Thursday,' " says Fisch, who left Boston last summer. "But here, it's like every night. Monday nights, Tuesday nights, are big."

Val Kappa agrees, saying she believes that the increase in stage time has helped her improve greatly in the year that she has been in New York. "I'm a lot more confident onstage," she says. "But I fell into a period when I got here where I was trying a little bit too hard, I think. And I was trying to be a little bit too quirky, and a little bit too different. But I fell back to just being myself. I get on every night here, where in Boston I was getting on maybe three times a week. So that makes you get better, too, because it helps you get over the nervousness."

Birbiglia, a Shrewsbury native, is a veteran of the Washington, D.C., scene, and he spent a summer in Boston honing his craft before moving to New York two years ago. He has gotten his share of breaks since, but he believes the city's audiences keep comics grounded. "The same guys who are headlining sold-out shows on the road in New York are doing spots at 11:30 on a Tuesday to a room of 11 people who are paying their check" and not necessarily paying attention, Birbiglia says.

The competition to get into some of the bigger-name clubs can be fierce. "You're competing with these guys who have been doing it 20, 25 years," Fisch says. "It's hard to get into these clubs. It's hard to even get an audition. But there are a lot of new funny people, and a lot of comics start their own rooms in other spaces."

Borelli moved to New York three years ago and landed his spots with Conan O'Brien nine months ago. The appearances, which have ranged from audience plants to a guy who plays wine glasses at parties, have gained him a bit of visibility on the scene, but they don't guarantee him a spot in the clubs or a quicker path to new jobs.

"It can help; it depends on how pushy you are about it," he says. "You kind of look like an [jerk] if you walk around and say, `I'm on "Conan O'Brien," ' because so are over 100 other people."

The competition at the clubs has led to more opportunities for comedians elsewhere in the city. Both Borelli and Mirman have started their own rooms, Borelli at the Gershwin Hotel on Thursdays and Mirman at Cinema Classics on Wednesdays, providing stage time for themselves and other comics. On any given night in New York, there are comedy nights at pubs, hotels, and performance spaces. These rooms have developed a variety of different styles of comedy that appeal to a wide range of audiences, all outside of the strict financial limitations of a club that needs to draw a regular audience with big names.

To comics such as Mirman, whose repertoire includes everything from abstract musings about his childhood to short video parodies, the freedom of New York's nonclub rooms is essential. "You know, I wouldn't be able to say, `That type of thing wouldn't work,' " says Mirman,