Patrick Strait - Funny Thing About Minnesota...: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Twin Cities Comedy Scene

Funny Thing About Minnesota

Funny Thing About Minnesota

THE RISE, FALL, AND REBIRTH OF THE TWIN CITIES COMEDY SCENE

Patrick Strait

Copyright 2021 by Patrick Strait. Other materials copyright 2021 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 551021906.

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ISBN: 978-1-68134-186-6 (paper)

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Contents

A Bar Called Mickey Finns

Downtown Minneapolis in the late 1970s wasnt lacking for entertainment. Disco was alive and booming at Scotties on Seventh. Scotties catered to a relatively posh crowd of revelers who were ready to pay a cover charge, adhere to a dress code, and shell out for more expensive drinks. Around the corner, on Hennepin Avenues notorious Block E, Moby Dicks bar was packed with younger drinkers looking to party, whether in the form of fighting, flirting, sex, or drugs. Over at First Avenue and Seventh Street, the popular Uncle Sams was part of a nationwide franchise of dance clubs. The venue had not yet become its more famous successor, First Avenue, and was still years away from its Purple Rain fame, but at the time, Uncle Sams was known for its progressive dance nights and party atmosphere.

But while there was plenty to do in Minneapolis, there wasnt anything unique driving people into the city. Bar owners competed to find new ways to attract attention and customers. Steve Billings was one of those bar owners.

At the time, Billings was the proud owner of two bars in the Twin Cities. In St. Paul, he had Dennys Loft, a popular bar known for dancing and live country music. This was Billingss moneymaker, as it attracted a younger crowd that was interested in dressing up, having drinks, and letting loose. Then there was Mickey Finns in Minneapolis.

Located just outside of the downtown core in St. Anthony, Mickey Finns was housed in the first floor of the Minneapolis Labor Union building at 312 Central Avenue Southeast. The bars business model was simple: each day pipe fitters, boilermakers, and other laborers would manage union business upstairs and then stop downstairs at Mickey Finns to drink in the evening.

The building housed the offices for most of the unions in Minneapolis, says Billings. It was busier than Hades Monday through Thursday, because wed get the lunch crowd from those offices, and then the unions would have meetings at night before heading down to the bar. Problem was, there were no meetings on Friday or Saturday nights.

In 1977, Billings wasnt trying to make comedy history. He wasnt planning to provide the kindling that would spark a comedy revolution or build a stage that would elevate some legendary comedic voices. He was just trying to make a few bucks on an off night at the bar.

At that time, most people in the country experienced stand-up comedy only through their televisions, such as the occasional set by Bob Newhart or George Carlin on late-night talk shows. There were only a few places in the country you could go to see live stand-up on a regular basis: New York, where the original Improv comedy club opened in the early sixties and was followed by Catch a Rising Star and a few others; or Los Angeles, where the second Improv franchise location opened in the mid-seventies. One weekend in 1977, one of Billingss bartenders took a trip to California, and while there he wandered into the LA Improv one night to check it out. When he returned to Minnesota, he raved about it to Billings, sharing details about the crowds, the comics, the show, and everything that made it a revolutionary entertainment experience.

The idea of an entire live show focused on stand-up comedy was unheard of, especially in Minnesota. Still, the seed was planted. I had never been to a stand-up comedy show in my life, Billings remembers. Id probably seen a comedian on Johnny Carson or something, but never a full show. But I figured nobody else in the city was doing it, so we might as well give it a shot.

With no experience and no comedy playbook to follow, Billings devised a plan to invite anyone and everyone with aspirations of making people laugh to get onstage. It would be something of a free-forall event that would, he hoped, put butts in the seats and sell a few more beers.

In late 1977, Billings launched a ten-week comedy competition at Mickey Finns called The First-Annual Minneapolis Stand-Up Comedy Competition.

We advertised in all the Minneapolis newspapers, and we got a pretty good number of people who came out and did their routine, Billings says. Wed let anyone who wanted to try get onstage.

Because stand-up comedy in the Twin Cities was essentially nonexistent, the talent pool for the ten-week showcase was, to put it mildly, shallow. We had a guy who went by the name of Chazy Bland, Billings recalls with a laugh. I dont remember what his real name was, but he was not real funny. But he kept coming back to the bar every week, so we just kept letting him be in the competition, and hed bomb every week.

You know, youd get some who were funny and some who werent, but we had to have people in the show to make it work.

Even though the laughs were few and far between, Billings was committed to the idea. With no real overhead in terms of production costs or having to pay the talent, there seemed little reason to give up on the series, despite its slow start. Still, the bar struggled to find an audience those first few months, with only ten or twelve people in the crowd on a good night. And then, Billings caught a break.

One day I got a call from a columnist from the Minneapolis Tribune who saw our ad, Billings says. They were always looking for something to write about and had never heard anything about stand-up comedy, so I invited him down to the show that night. He thought it was pretty good, so he plugged it in his column, and the next week we had a lot more people coming in to check it out.

The audiences slowly began to build. It still wasnt a home run by any means, but the novelty of live comedy was enough to set Mickey Finns apart in the crowded world of Minneapolis entertainment.

At the end of the ten weeks, Mickey Finns crowned its first comedy champion: a man named Gary Johnson. Though it may not be a name youll hear when learning about the comedy pioneers of the era, Johnsons is arguably the first name on the list of notable stand-up comedians in Twin Cities history.

[Minneapolis television station] KSTP had him [Johnson] and me on a TV show one night, and that got us a little bit of excitement, Billings recalls. While the show may have been a modest launching pad for Johnson, the real achievement was the interest it built locally around the idea of stand-up comedy.