Locations for Laughter
The unique business offering of happiness.
One of the first clubs I ever worked in, and I hesitate to say work because I was only doing a guest spot, was the Punchline in San Francisco.
Recently, due to the rapid face-lift the entire Bay Area is receiving the Punchline lost its lease and a club that birthed so many legendary careers is closing.
I think it’s very important that comedy clubs exist.
And sure, we might as well throw in Bowling Alleys, Amusement Parks, Movie Theaters, and other venues that take money in exchange for happiness.
Comedy Clubs, however, got me thinking. This is a specific location designed to guarantee happiness.
Like if you want to feel that specific emotion you can go in your yellow pages or more likely, your smartphone, pull up your map and find a place that supplies laughter.
That is extremely unique when you think about it.
There are five main emotions: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise.
There aren’t any places that do that for other emotions. There is no Anger Cellar. Or Gotham Sadness Club. Or Disgust Store.
I suppose some gyms help people with their anger but they don’t supply that anger unless the person before you ‘forgot’ to wipe down the machine… again.
Yoga studios assist others with shedding their sadness but they don’t supply more depression, do they? There is no Vinyasa Vendetta II offering at Core Power.
Let’s look at it another way.
Picture a group of audience members at a comedy show. A few couples wanting a night out on the town to share some laughs. Not some yells. Those couples don’t go out looking for anger. They didn’t great dressed up and spend $200 a piece at the Dallas Benihana to have a good group cry, did they?
Laughter is a very communal emotion. It is one of the few that we not only enjoy but want to share with others.
Sure there are tons of other emotions. All of which are valid and have their place in society. But it made me laugh (there it is again, and here I am, sharing it in hopes it might make you laugh too) to think that there are venues for laughter but not for other emotions.
Why isn’t there an AngerWorks next door to ComedyWorks in Denver? Or a Jealousy Factory across the street from the Laugh Factory in LA?
There are strip clubs but they actually do a poor job of dealing with the emotion of desire.
Most people will tell you that strip clubs would be like a comedy club offering setups but no punchlines.
Fear actually does work but we usually reserve it for Halloween and State of the Union addresses. And there aren’t clubs supplying these emotions in every city across the country.
There are no year round clubs that provide fear and are doing the business that comedy clubs do.
The reality is people love to laugh. People don’t love to be angry. Although I suppose that’s part of the reason gun clubs exist. I’m not sure of which emotion those clubs are meant to evoke.
I imagine joy for some. Anger for others. Fear for many.
Get in there and fire off a few rounds in a controlled environment so you’re not doing it in public. To be honest I’ve never been to one.
I did fire a weapon on military base in Afghanistan once. It was a 50-cal machine gun. I was scared to be honest. Scared of hurting myself or someone else. I was scared of the kickback. But the soldiers showed me how to use it and that fear changed to joy fairly quickly which I hate to admit but is absolutely true.
The interesting difference here though is the emotion of fear or anger or whatever the hell it is that people get from firing a gun into a target isn’t the same thing as sharing laughter.
And it is lightyears away from the joy of delivering that laugh. I imagine this has something to do with the target not being the real thing. Whether the imaginary target gun owners use when they’re day-dreaming about being in the next Expendables movie is an endangered species or a another person the bottom line is a target isn’t real.
And in comedy it is all about delivering your ideas to a real audience looking to laugh. Many comedians will tell you that performing comedy and having a joke land, hearing the audience explode with that joy, knowing that it was your idea and your delivery and your timing that served that experience to all of these strangers is the singular best feeling in the world.
Now granted most of these comics are drug-addled, lonely, manic, bi-polar, attention-starved bottom-feeders but still!
In all seriousness connecting with a crowd is pretty darn near perfect.
People love to be the cause of other people laughter. No one likes being the cause of someone else’s anger. You never get to work and say ohhh man I really pissed off some other drivers on my way in.
Although there can be some joy in that too.
The only issue with venues supplying laughter is that laughter is subjective. Many clubs claim to supply laughter but in reality they supply nothing of the sort. Many nights they fall short in that promise.
In the 1980s comedy clubs opened up everywhere not only because laughter is good business but because everyone and their mother thought they were funny and could do the job. It was referred to as the Comedy Boom.
More recently we’ve experienced another Comedy Boom that has aligned with the digital age. Everyone thinking because they are great on Twitter that will translate to the stage. And it doesn’t always work that way.
Like any business sometimes what is promised isn’t delivered. Sometimes the ‘Best Pizza in New York’ is far from it. Occasionally the ‘#1 Action Movie of the Century’ isn’t quite all that. And often times comedy clubs don’t deliver on laughter.
Regardless, of these missteps, these less than funny shows, these nights where a crowd and comedian don’t connect or some young budding superstar in the making hasn’t quite worked every joke in her or his set to perfection, the reality is and always will be that the world is a better place so long as there are venues out there that keep pushing for joy, for happiness, and for laughter.
The Punchline in San Francisco always strived, and more often than not, did just that and we’re worse off as a society to be losing it.
