Comedy shows in the neighborhood are plenty, and starting this spring, local comics will have a home base at Greenpoint Comedy Club.
For the past eight weeks, husband-and-wife team and founders Jeremy Pinsly and Kayla Sossin have been working behind the scenes to turn the space at 66 Greenpoint Avenue into the perfect bar-slash-show atmosphere that comedians will flock to.
Pinsly, who has been doing comedy for over a decade and performed in scenes from NYC to Nashville, has wanted to start his own club for the past two years, particularly with the goal of expanding the scene outside of the more tourist-driven stereotypes of Manhattan.
“Wouldn’t it be great if the crowd was 80% locals?” he remarked of the idea of opening in Greenpoint and catering to the neighborhood.
Construction is currently underway in the space, including building out the stage in the back room (which is planned to have a 70-80-person capacity) and adding a green room, plus revamping the front.
Pinsly, who will serve as the booker and general manager, wants the club to be a hub for emerging comics, stressing the importance of a community vibe (as well as the importance of paying comics what they can).
“I want to bring back collectivity and build infrastructure for young and new comics,” he said. “This place doesn’t succeed without a good group of people.”
And that good group of people includes the friends giving input on their food and drink program, which will include beer (including potential partnerships with Threes Brewing), wine (and wine-based cocktails), mocktails, and simple snacks to start with the goal of expanding.
There are also plans to expand the programming and hours. To start, Greenpoint Comedy Club will operate on evenings and weekends, but Pinsly hopes to also offer a place for comics to write and practice their sets and pitch jokes daily, as well as record their specials.
Greenpoint Comedy Club is aiming for a March or April opening.
While we still can, let’s have a comedy skit about our sad Fearless Leader, Donald Trump, looking at his sharpie-stained map, mistaking Greenpoint for Greenland, and invading us with his Gestapo I.C.E. storm troopers. Today Greenpoint, tomorrow the world! To paraphrase the theme song from “The Produces”: it’s Springtime for Donald and tyranny, Goose steps the new step today, Bombs falling from the skies again, Trumpland is on the rise again. Seriously however, as Americans like Renee Good are executed on our city streets, perhaps Lutherans Pastor Martin Niemöller – condemned to a concentration camp for speaking up against the evils that he likewise saw around him in 1930’s Germany – said it best: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew; The they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.” Poet Dylan Thomas said “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” A few decades later Joni Mitchel sang: “Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone.” Don’t let our freedoms be lost and gone……