By HOLLY NADLER

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Boston funnymen and women, heralded as The Boston Gold Rush of Comedy, arrived on the scene shortly after New York comics showcased at famous clubs such as the Improv and Catch a Rising Star, and Los Angeles comics appeared at the West Coast Improv, the Comedy Club and the Laugh Factory. Boston’s boom of small comedy clubs, some lodged in back rooms in restaurants, produced big stars such as Jay Leno, Louis C.K., Dennis Leary, Janeane Garofalo, and Vineyard habitué Lenny Clark.

Last Friday night Boston comedy came to Edgartown at Water Street Restaurant at the Harbor View Hotel, where all 120 seats were occupied in the normally sedate dining hall. Over a panel of windows facing the nighttime harbor, a deep teal green drape was suspended behind a microphone and a high-seat chair.

For the first comedy show ever to rock the house at the 121-year-old hotel, comedian Mike McCarthy, bald with a goatee and dressed in black, took the stage with two brown bottles of beer in his fist. Mr. McCarthy has worked on Showtime and on the national live standup circuit. Known as the Comedy Barbarian, his style suggests the throat-shredding energy of an Anglo Carlos Mencia. He refers often to a drinking problem, suggesting that if he wrote a children’s book, the refrain would be: “Shh! Daddy has a hangover.”

He was succeeded by a man billed as the godfather of Boston comics: Dick Doherty, a 70-something wearing jeans and glasses with a long, silver-white ponytail and slight Irish brogue, the kind you acquire growing up in an Irish-American Boston neighborhood. Mr. Doherty is the owner of Dick Doherty’s Beantown Comedy Club in Boston. His voice is guttural, his comedy persona curmudgeonly. “I’m in a horrible mood,” he said. “I just remarried after almost thirty-five years of . . . being happy.”

The third and final comic, Harrison Stebbins, has enjoyed many turns at Nick’s Comedy Stop and at Catch a Rising Star in New York. Reminiscent of a young Jay Leno, Mr. Stebbins, tall, with a full shock of dark hair, was unabashed, like the two comics before him, about poking the audience in its collective ribs. He knew he was on the Vineyard because here we were, seated at white linen-covered tables, willing to pay “six bucks for potato chips.” He proved to be a classic Boston comic — gruff and cynical with working-class biases.

Two young Harbor View executives were responsible for the event: Elizabeth Rothwell, an Islander and 1997 graduate of the regional high school who has worked year-round for the last five years as hotel director of marketing, and food and beverage director Bob Forbes, who recently relocated to the Vineyard from St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. “We were really pleased with the turnout for the comedians,” Ms. Rothwell said this week when reached by phone. “We’re really trying to provide entertainment for people who live here in the winter. In the summer we’re dealing with a tourism-driven economy. We’re all working too hard to enjoy any of the events going on constantly. So this is our time to have some fun.”

Mr. Forbes, who came up with the idea and found the comedians after researching comedy clubs online, agreed. “It worked out well for the performers because they enjoyed their overnight at the Harbor View,” he said.

Buoyed by the success of the first comedy night, Ms. Rothwell and Mr. Forbes said they hope to arrange more standup venues in the future.

The next big shindig at the Harbor View is being planned around Valentine’s Day. For information call the hotel at 508-627-7000.