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.