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You Gotta Be Joking: Chattanooga Has Improbably Become A Southern Base Camp For New York Comedians 메이저사이트

Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / Comedian Dan Pulzello performs during the Carpetbagger's Comedy Night at the Bode hotel in Chattanooga on Friday, Jan. 21, 2022.

An odd result of the pandemic is that Chattanooga's comedy-club scene got a shot in the arm. A joke jab, so to speak.

Month after month, comedians from New York City gather here to play a pop-up comedy show in the lobby of Bode, a boutique hotel at 730 Chestnut St. They do it, in part, as tribute to a friend, Jeff Greenspan, a diminutive, self-described "gay, Jewish guy" who fled New York for Chattanooga during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 and never moved back.

Greenspan, 51, attributes his move here, in part, to being shown a two-bedroom North Shore condo for sale. It was unit No. 420 (coincidentally, the numerical equivalent of a secret handshake in marijuana culture), and the property was represented by a real estate agent named Michael Jackson. Greenspan took both facts as signals from the comedy gods that he needed to relocate here immediately.

Also, Greenspan said, he bought the condo because he realized he could use it as a base camp for his comedian friends — some fledgling, some more established. A few were already working bigger comedy rooms in Atlanta and Nashville. While they are here, some manage to clock a little stage time a few blocks away at The Comedy Catch at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the city's dominant comedy club.

Soon, some of New York's estimated 5,000 "working" comics, most of whom had never been to Tennessee, were talking about "the Chattanooga run" and using the Scenic City as a hub for a week or two of performances around the South.

Through force of will, Greenspan has created a twice-monthly, Friday night comedy show he calls "Carpetbagger's Comedy Night," where customers pay 10 bucks to feast on a comedy buffet featuring New York (and regional) comedians.

"The reason I come [to Chattanooga] is that he cares so much," said Eric Neumann, an up-and-coming New York-based comedian who has appeared on Comedy Central, Netflix and just last week on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." "It all starts with Jeff. It's cool to start in a smaller market and help build up the comedy scene.

"New York is the major leagues. It's unbelievably competitive and sometimes extremely daunting. Sometimes you have a better shot of making it somewhere else."

Added Dan Pulzello, another New York comedian who appears on Greenspan's shows here, "Nothing personal, but I had never heard of Chattanooga before Jeff."

Chattanooga: A Southern base camp for New York comedians View 15 Photos

Fittingly, Bode is in the shadow of Cameron Hill, which was reportedly a nest for entrepreneurial Northerners who moved here in the 19th century — yes, some called them carpetbaggers.