Eventually, the national scene died down. Failed sit-coms turned powerful stage performers into has-beens almost overnight. HBO and Comedy Central gave people the option to stay home. Locally, the Ding Ho had closed by 1985, and the demise of Play It Again Sam’s and Stitches followed. Other clubs switched to music. By the early ’90s, the comedy boom was bust.

But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity. Despite the loss of venues and audiences, a surprising number of Boston comics have continued not only to ply their trade, but to earn a living at it. More than a decade after the star stand-ups gave up or went on to true stardom, dozens of talented comedians from those boom days still perform regularly around town. Jimmy Tingle plays a few one-man shows a year, and he’s active in hosting benefits. Chance Langton, DJ Hazard, and Steve Sweeney headline regularly at Dick Doherty’s clubs all around New England. Don Gavin and Kevin Knox host regular showcases at the Comedy Connection. And that’s just a handful of the folks, including Mike McDonald, Mike Donovan, Paul Nardizzi, Tony V., Frank Santorelli, Teddy Bergeron, and Kenny Rogerson, that Bostonians can still catch at the local clubs.

Here’s a look a some who are still standing.

Steve Sweeney

Irish Catholics, of course, are never far off the radar. “Ethnic people, historically, use humor to reflect whatever they’re going through,” Sweeney says. “Irish people, Italian people, black people, Greek people. Humor has always been part of the culture. So you have people coming out of the neighborhoods and getting on stage. It’s kind of an outgrowth of the street corner, in a way.”

Although Sweeney draws on stereotypes, he creates characters with their own flair. “Most people like them,” he says. “I’ve never gotten any complaints. I never do anything with a mean spirit. I think that communicates, so I’ve never had anyone take exception.”

Sweeney recently mounted a variety show called “Ship of Fools.” He had wanted to do a small show, but he couldn’t find a decent space, so he booked the Berklee Performance Center. In his effort to make the show fit the space, he went on a tireless search for acts, eventually rounding up comedians, singers, cheerleaders, sports stars, and local celebrities.

But even more satisfying than the stage, Sweeney says, is his job as a teacher of acting and writing at UMass. “It gets me out of myself,” he says. “When you’re a comedian, you get very self-involved. It’s all about you. When you’re a teacher, you’re forced to make it about them.”

Jimmy Tingle

Tingle first got the bug to get into stand-up while working as a bartender at the Ding Ho. In those days, he was wearing a trench coat, hat, and sunglasses and singing songs like “Test Tube Baby Blues.” He got a standing ovation his first time at the Ding Ho, and he was hooked. “There were a few open-mike nights around town,” Tingle says. “I got into it, I started doing it, and I loved it.”

Tingle grew up in a politically involved family in Cambridge. His act, he says, grew from those roots. “Most comics talk about things that interest them,” he observes. “They talk about relationships, they talk about cars, or whatever they’re into. I read a lot of newspapers and I talked about what was going on in society. That’s what I did more and more.”

These days, you’re most likely to find Tingle working theaters, where he has more control over the atmosphere of his show than he would in clubs. “I wanted to do my own one-man show and I wanted to work alone,” he says. “When you’re doing something that’s social/political, it just helps to be around people who understand what you’re talking about and are receptive to it. Because not everyone wants to hear about what’s going on in the news, or think.”

DJ Hazard

Hazard laughs when thinking about his early days. “Once you play guitar in comedy, you get labeled a ‘guitar guy,’ ” he says. “You’re a pariah. I think that might have expedited my headliner promotion, because no one wants to follow a guitar guy.” Hazard followed the lead of comedians like Lenny Clarke, who used to do two shows a night. At one point, Nick’s Comedy Stop was doing five shows a night on Saturdays, and Comedy Connection, then just down the street on Warrenton, was doing three. In a feat that couldn’t be pulled off in today’s scene, Hazard played all eight of those shows one Saturday night.

Hazard still spreads his shows around, playing Nick’s Comedy Stop, Dick Doherty’s clubs, and sometimes the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square. “On my nights off, I usually go to the Studio just to hang out, and they usually ask me to perform,” he says. “Sometimes, I’m actually booked there.”

Chance Langton

Langton describes his on-stage persona as the anti-Dangerfield: “Where Rodney’s not getting any respect, I’m not giving any.” And though Langton admired mainstream stalwarts such as Johnny Carson, Don Rickles, and Bob Newhart, he found his inspiration in people like Andy Kaufman and TV pioneer Ernie Kovacs.

Comedy, however, was not Langton’s first calling. In the mid ’70s, he had a deal with Epic as a singer-songwriter, and had his sights set on becoming a recording artist. But after that fizzled, Langton’s music started drifting toward the satirical. From there, it wasn’t too far a leap to stand-up. “I officially started doing what I would call stand-up comedy in 1983,” he says. “It was pretty easy in a way because I had already established myself with the musical stuff. It’s almost like a play. I was able to add another act.”

One of Langton’s signature routines is a piece where he lets the audience direct his movements; he assigns different gestures to different audience reactions. At the Ding Ho reunion show this past October, the crowd directed Langton for several minutes. “It was almost like a bit that was created in reverse,” he says. “Sometimes one person laughs. Sometimes some people laugh. Sometimes everybody laughs, sometimes people clap. It actually came out originally that I was assigning signals for that. ‘Every time you do this . . . ’ So from now on, when one person laughs, I point. And then what happens is, inevitably, somebody can’t hold it in. You’re going to laugh because someone else laughed. It’s a chain reaction.”

Kevin Knox

Knox puts himself in the second wave of comedians to make it in Boston during the ’80s, after Sweeney, Clarke, and Gavin. “I just kind of wandered into it,” he says. “I went into a comedy room one night, and I’d never been to one, and I just thought it was the best thing in the world.” From there, he started going to Clarke’s open-mike Wednesdays at the Ding Ho, and became a regular. “You didn’t want to be anywhere else,” he says.

That’s an enthusiasm Knox still brings to his Monday-night showcase at the Comedy Connection, where he’s watched new talent take the stage for the first time. “Sometimes it’s a great thrill to see someone you know is going to be funny,” he says. “It’s almost something you can feel from the first moment. You can just feel their charisma. You go, ‘Wow, this one’s going to be someone to watch.’ ”

Although he has done TV work, Knox’s true calling is live performance. “It seems there’s two different kinds of comedians,” he theorizes. One type are “the guys who truly love making people laugh,” Knox says, “and I think that’s actually kind of rare. I feel like I’m one of those people. I love my job. I love making people laugh. “And then there are the comics who use it as a steppingstone to something else. Some of these guys, they use it just to get exposure, and then they’re out of there. You can’t make these guys do comedy anymore. It’s just kind of a shame.”

Don Gavin

Gavin was in the scene from the very beginning, in 1979, when the Comedy Connection was the only club in town. He found success the first time he stepped on stage at the club’s open-mike night. “And I was being confronted by Lenny Clarke, who thought I’d been working for years and years,” he remembers. Gavin soon discovered, though, that being a good stand-up would require more of him than he had originally thought. “The third time I did it, I made up all of this stuff and I was horrible. Twelve minutes seemed like an hour and a half. I found out you can’t just make this shit up.”

A little more than a year after he began, Gavin, who was dividing his time between comedy and a job as a teacher/guidance counselor, had a dramatic wake-up call. “I went off the road driving back from school one day because I was so exhausted from being up until three in the morning the night before,” he says. “I hit the guardrail, and hit the windshield, and I said, ‘I’ve got to pick one or the other.’ That was the turning point.” He’s given the past 20 years to performing full time.