A Seattle comedy club canceled four comics because they didn’t align with its neighborhood’s “progressive values” — leading one of the funnymen to predict the club would go out of business.
The Capitol Hill Comedy Bar, which celebrates the “vibrant voices of the queer community” with a weekly “Queers to the front” open mic. had booked Jim Florentine, Dave Smith, Luis Gomez and Kurt Metzger for upcoming dates before the about-face, which the owner said was to “maintain the harmony within our community.”
Florentine, who voiced a mentally disabled teenage character named Special Ed on Comedy Central’s prank call show “Crank Yankers,” told The Post in a recent interview why he thinks he was snubbed from the club, which has a Dungeons and Drag Queens Pride Month brunch on its calendar and requires performers to use “respectful behavior and language.”
“I speak my mind on stage, I’m edgy, I don’t kiss the audience’s a–. I’ll talk about the transgender stuff,” the Brooklyn native and New Jersey resident said.
Florentine and the other comics, who share the same agent, were notified by the club’s booker, Jes Anderson, about the change of heart in a letter.
Anderson said in the missive that the club valued the “art of comedy” and “diverse perspectives,” but had been forced to draw a line after receiving “significant feedback expressing concerns about the alignment of these upcoming shows with the neighborhood’s ethos.”
The neighborhood, which is billed by Visit Seattle as an “LGBTQ+ epicenter,” made national news when Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters declared ownership of the area in the spring of 2020, dubbing it the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ), and denying access to cops amid widespread police brutality protests.
“Given the feedback and to avoid any potential negative impact on both our club and the artists involved, as well as to maintain the harmony within our community, we believe the most responsible course of action is not to move forward with the shows,” Anderson said, according to a copy of the letter shared by Metzger.
Florentine found the explanation laughable.
“I didn’t know you had to check with the neighborhood. I called my friends that own comedy clubs around the country and said ‘I’m coming in a couple months, you gotta check the neighborhood and see if they’re OK with me performing there,’” he joked.
The comic guesses that the club could have had second thoughts after watching “Yankers” or listening to his non-PC podcast or his many appearances on The Howard Stern Show.
“A million things could have popped up where they said ‘hey, we don’t want this guy,’” he said.
“Usually what happens is a club will research you before they book you, [and decide] we don’t want that type of comedy – a lot of places won’t book you and you’ll never even know.
Never Miss a Story
Sign up to get the best stories straight to your inbox.
Thanks for signing up!
“But in this case, they booked us,” Florentine continued.
“If that’s the way they’re going to run their business, I don’t see how they’re going to stay in business that long.”
The comic said he was used to softening some aspects of his act in certain more liberal locales, and admitted that some of jokes probably wouldn’t get big laughs at Capitol Hill Comedy Bar.
cancelled upcoming shows for several “non-PC” comedians. Capitol Hill Comedy / Bar
When asked for an example of such a bit, Florentine shared a joke about his son’s gender identity that has to do with the size of his genitalia.
However Florentine noted that making people uncomfortable is part of his art.
“That’s why I got into comedy, to push boundaries,” he said.
“Like sometimes you toe the line with something and think ‘oh that went a little too far’… That’s the goal as a comic: try to find where that line is and just ride it.”
Florentine said he harbors no ill will against Capitol Hill Comedy Bar, and was already rebooked at the Tacoma Comedy Club, about 45 minutes south of Seattle.
“I think they are going to book all of us there on different weekends, they said ‘we’ll take you guys, absolutely. We don’t censor comics like they do, come on over here,’” he said.
The other comics made their feelings known about the snub on other platforms.
Gomez took to his podcast last week to speculate that “young, jealous” local comics pressured Anderson’s decision.
“That’s what happens when comics don’t have anything going on. They just look for drama,” he said.
“So (Anderson) found drama within the comedy space there and she was like, ‘Alright, I think they’re great, but I’m not, you know, I don’t need to… make it a thing.’ Maybe they were concerned with protests? Seattle is like a super woke area.”
Metzger mocked the club for “practicing group think” on the “Jimmy Dore Show,” and also predicted the club would fail.
Representatives of the club didn’t respond to multiple interview requests from The Post.
