Comedy Works is a stand-up comedy club with two locations in the Denver, Colorado metropolitan area. The downtown club opened in September 1981 and is located in Larimer Square in Denver. The south club, which opened September 2008, is part of The Landmark development in Greenwood Village.
Originally known as the Comedy Shoppe, owners George McKelvey (the "Godfather" of Denver's comedy community [1] ), Doug Olson, and Edd Nichols renamed the venue Comedy Works in 1981 and moved it to a basement space of the Granite/Graham-Clayton building in Larimer Square. [2] In September of that year, Comedy Works became the first nightclub in Denver to have professional comedy on a full-time basis.[ citation needed ] Since then, Comedy Works has grown to include the south club in The Landmark neighborhood which features a restaurant, a lounge, and a ballroom.
Over their histories, the two clubs have featured comedians such as Colorado-native Roseanne Barr (who started her stand-up career at a 1980 Comedy Shoppe open-mic night [2] ), Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, George Lopez, and Lewis Black. Several comedians have recorded CDs at the Larimer Square location including Kathleen Madigan (Shallow Happy Thoughts for the Soul in 2002), Dave Attell ( Skanks for the Memories in 2003), and Josh Blue (Good Josh Bad Arm in 2005). [3]
Current owner Wende Curtis started as a cocktail waitress at a now-defunct Fort Collins, CO Comedy Works location. [4] After graduating from Colorado State University, Curtis became a manager for the Fort Collins location, later managed a Tampa, FL Comedy Works, and turned around that club in the process. She later returned to Denver in 1993 to run the Larimer Square location. In 2001, with the parent company facing financial difficulties, Curtis and two partners bought the business and by 2003 she had bought out her partners.
Comedy Works Entertainment is the booking arm of the business. Under the leadership of Mike Raftery, the company produces comedy concerts in larger venues around Denver and the state of Colorado. It also serves in a management capacity for comedians, including Josh Blue.
Fort Collins is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 169,810 at the 2020 census, an increase of 17.94% since 2010. Fort Collins is the principal city of the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and is a major city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. The city is the fourth most populous city in Colorado. Situated on the Cache La Poudre River along the Colorado Front Range, Fort Collins is located 56 mi (90 km) north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
Larimer County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 359,066. The county seat and most populous city is Fort Collins. The county was named for William Larimer, Jr., the founder of Denver.
Estes Park is a statutory town in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 5,904 at the 2020 United States Census. Estes Park is a part of the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor. A popular summer resort and the location of the headquarters for Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park lies along the Big Thompson River. Landmarks include The Stanley Hotel and The Baldpate Inn. The town overlooks Lake Estes and Olympus Dam.
Laporte is an unincorporated town, a post office, and a census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The CDP is a part of the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Laporte post office has the ZIP Code 80535. At the United States Census 2020, the population of the Laporte CDP was 2,409.
Loveland is the home rule municipality that is the second most populous municipality in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Loveland is situated 46 miles (74 km) north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver and is the 14th most populous city in Colorado. As of the 2020 census the population of Loveland was 76,378. The city forms part of the Fort Collins-Loveland Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor. The city's public schools are part of the Thompson R2-J School District.
The Improv is a comedy club franchise. It was founded as a single venue in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City in 1963, and expanded into a chain of venues in the late 1970s.
Joseph Mason, was an explorer, business man, law man, and early settler of the Colorado Territory He is best known as the "Father of Fort Collins, Colorado".
Camp Collins was a 19th-century outpost of the United States Army in the Colorado Territory. The fort was commissioned in the summer of 1862 to protect the Overland Trail from attacks by Native Americans in a conflict that later became known as the Colorado War. Located along the Cache la Poudre River in Larimer County, it was relocated from its initial location near Laporte after a devastating flood. Its second location downstream on the Poudre was used until 1866 and became the nucleus around which the City of Fort Collins was founded.
The Coloradoan is a daily newspaper in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Coloradoan's website is updated throughout the day with breaking news and video coverage of community news in Northern Colorado.
Josh Blue is an American comedian. He was voted the Last Comic Standing on NBC's reality show Last Comic Standing during its fourth season, which aired May–August 2006. Blue has cerebral palsy, and much of his self-deprecating humor is centered on this.
John Michael Kefalas is a politician in the U.S. state of Colorado. An educator and lobbyist before first running for the legislature in 2004, Kefalas defeated a Republican incumbent to win election to the Colorado House of Representatives as a Democrat in 2006. Kefalas won election to the State Senate in 2012 and represented Senate District 14 until early 2019. In 2018, Kefalas ran for and won a seat on the Larimer County Board of County Commissioners. He resigned his Senate seat, and a vacancy committee nominated Joann Ginal to replace him.
The Lindenmeier site is a stratified multi-component archaeological site most famous for its Folsom component. The former Lindenmeier Ranch is in the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, in northeastern Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The site contains the most extensive Folsom culture campsite yet found with calibrated radiocarbon dates of c. 12,300 B.P.. Artifacts were also found from subsequent Archaic and Late pre-historic periods.
Situated in the heart of Fort Collins, The Lincoln Center is the premier multi-venue performing and visual arts center in Northern Colorado. It was founded in 1978 through a community initiative called “Designing Tomorrow Today” that resulted in a voter-approved $2.2 million capital improvements tax, with the community raising an additional $300,000 to complete a new performing and visual arts center for Fort Collins.
Elizabeth Robbins Stone was an American pioneer woman who was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1988.
G. William "Bill" Oakley, Jr. was a theatrical producer-director-actor and seminal figure in the revival of early American theater, melodrama and vaudeville with theaters in Colorado and Missouri.
Illegal Pete's is a Colorado-based group of quick-service, fast-casual "Mission Style" burrito restaurants that takes inspiration from burritos popularized in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s.
Sexpot Comedy is a comedy collective, producing or sponsoring nine podcasts and more than a dozen weekly or monthly live events in Denver, Colorado. It is run by partners Kayvan Soorena Tyler Khalatbari-Limaki, a local entrepreneur, and Andy Juett, a local comedian and producer.
Lucky's Market is a brand of supermarkets that are being used by two independent and unrelated regional supermarket chains, LM Acquisition Co. LLC in Colorado and Lucky's Market Ohio in Ohio.
The G. W. & W. M. Clayton Building, also known as the Granite Hotel, Granite Building and the Clayton Building, is an 1882 commercial building in Denver, Colorado and is a Denver Landmark. It is a four-story building which was built in 1882 on the site of the first building in Denver, a log cabin. It was built to host the M.J. McNamara Dry Goods Company. G. W. & W. M. Clayton is inscribed near the top of the building for businessman George W. Clayton and his brother William M. Clayton, who served as mayor of Denver. The Denver Public Library has a photograph of the G. W. & W. M. Clayton Building.