Stand-Up Comedy in Chicago

Ten years after Chicago saw its first full-time comedy club open, the landscape was decidedly different. �Stand-up comedy has exploded in the last couple of years,� a club owner told the Chicago Tribune in 1985, �that�s the only way to describe it: exploded.� It was truly a comedy boom, with as many as 16 clubs operating at once, and it lasted nearly a decade before fading, taking with it some of Chicago�s oldest comedy stages, including the Comedy Cottage, Comedy Womb, and Who�s on First. Still, stalwarts like Barrel of Laughs (south) and Zanies (north) persevered. That part of the story is known; overlooked is the fact there was a comedy boom, period. To hear the story, it is as if stand-up comedy innately morphed from a dated nightclub scene to what one Chicago Sun-Times writer called �Chicago�s atomic comedy blast.�