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 United States Census, an increase of 17.94% since the 2010 United States Census. 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. Fort Collins is a midsize college town, home to Colorado State University and Front Range Community College's Larimer campus.
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.
The Town of Berthoud is a Statutory Town located in Larimer and Weld counties, Colorado, United States. The town population was 10,332 at the 2020 United States Census with 10,071 residing in Larimer County and 261 residing in Weld County. Berthoud is situated north of the Little Thompson River, 21 miles (34 km) south of Fort Collins and 43 miles (69 km) north of Denver in the Front Range Urban Corridor.
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 2010, the population of the Laporte CDP was 2,450, while the population of the 80535 ZIP Code Tabulation Area was 2,636 including adjacent areas.
The City of 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 Budweiser Events Center is a multi-purpose arena in Loveland, Colorado, 55 mi (89 km) northeast of Denver. The arena is located on The Ranch Events Complex and is owned by Larimer County, Colorado and managed by Spectra Venue Management, and tickets are handled by ComcastTIX.
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 a radiocarbon date of 10,600 to 10,720 B.P. Artifacts were also found from subsequent Archaic and Late pre-historic periods.
Elizabeth Hickok Robbins Stone was an American pioneer woman who was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1988. Born in Connecticut and raised in New York, Elizabeth Hickok was married and widowed twice and had 8 children from her first marriage to Dr. Ezekiel Robbins. Most of her adulthood was spent as a pioneer, building homes and businesses with her husbands in Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado. Both of her husbands participated in developing statehoods: Ezekiel Robbins in Illinois and Lewis Stone in Minnesota.
40°33′33″N105°4′41″W The Fort Collins Colorado Temple is a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fort Collins, Colorado. Completed in 2016, the intent to construct the temple was announced by church president Thomas S. Monson on April 2, 2011, during the church's semi-annual general conference.
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.
LM Acquisition Co. LLC , doing business as Lucky's Market, is a group of two separate supermarket chains in Colorado and Ohio that started in Boulder and briefly became a national chain before it shrank back to its home state. Founded in 2003 by Bo and Trish Sharon, the chain focuses primarily on organic food. From 2016 to 2019, the company was partially owned by the Kroger supermarket chain. At its peak in 2019, the company had 39 stores in ten states. The withdrawal of financial support from Kroger at the end of 2019 led to a massive company downsizing to just six surviving stores in four states and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in January 2020. After the Sharons obtained the surviving six stores, they quickly sold off the four stores outside of Colorado to only retain two stores, one in Boulder and the other in Fort Collins, by April 2020.