Feeling the effects of a business slowdown at comedy clubs are the very reasons for the clubs` existence: Standup comedians. The number of
establishments closing across the country and in the Chicago area means fewer places for comics to tell jokes about traveling, fast-food restaurants and relationships.
”When I started, it was rough in comedy, and then it got really easy and now it`s getting rough again,” said Chicago comic Diane Alaimo, who has been working for six years. She got her start at the Comedy Cottage in Rosemont, the first full-time comedy club to open in the area. The Cottage, which had opened in 1975, closed its doors last fall.
”It was too good for a little while,” she said. ”Everybody was making a lot of money. There were clubs everywhere, you could work everywhere … and I think (the depressed market is) just going to filter out a lot of stuff.”
Bill Hicks, a comic who performed a one-man show in Montreal as part of the Just for Laughs International Comedy Festival, and a regular visitor to Chicago`s Funny Firm, said the better clubs in the area will survive. ”The cream will rise. Chicago`s a unique comedy place, and I`d hate to be a club owner there,” he said with a laugh.
Just as club owners are concerned about giving away too many free passes, so are the comics.
”I think people need an incentive to come out now,” said John Riggi, a former Chicago act who now lives in Los Angeles. Riggi wasfeatured at the Just for Laughs festival.
”And they certainly don`t want to pay. Especially for guys they`ve never heard of. So the economy`s real tight right now. It`s hard to justify spending $7 on some guy that you`ve never heard of before.”
But Paul Gilmartin of Chicago, a comic for 4 1/2 years, noted that with all the competition and gimmicks clubs are using to attract people, it can only benefit comedy lovers.
”Everybody`s vying for the patronage of the comedy-goer, and it`s gotten better for them in the last five years because the shows have increased in quality and ticket prices haven`t really gone up that much because the clubs have to compete with each other.”