After 33 years in Sandy Springs, the legendary Punchline Comedy Club is shutting down in April and seeking a new location.
The club’s majority owner Jamie Bendall, who purchased the venue in 2003, said he hasn’t finalized a new location just yet but in the interim, he plans to do “pop up” shows in other spaces.
Minority business partner Chris DiPetta blamed the loss of access to parking next door to its 280 Hilderbrand location.
"Sandy Springs is building a lot around there and tearing stuff down," he said. "There isn't enough parking. We can't function without parking."
The Punchline’s lease expired on Dec. 31, 2014, but Bendall received a 90-day extension from the landlord, according to the club’s original co-owner Ron DiNunzio, who is helping Bendall find another spot.
DiPetta — who worked at the club when it opened in 1982 — said he hopes “we can bring the soul of this Punchline to the new one.”
“All this mojo has collected in that building,” said local producer Steve Mitchell, who created a 2014 documentary called “If These Walls Could Talk” about the Punchline. “Every comedian that has ever made you laugh has gone through that room. I’m saddened but I understand.”
Over the decades, the Punchline has hosted thousands of comics, including big names such as Jeff Foxworthy, Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Dave Chappelle, Jay Leno and Louis CK. Foxworthy, who performed his first stand-up at the Punchline in the mid-1980s, still visits regularly to test out new material.
The Punchline's final scheduled shows are the weekend of April 4-5 with Alingon Mitra, a stand-up comic featured last year on "Last Comic Standing."
The club’s lineup has been considerably weaker in recent months. The Buckhead-based Atlanta Improv, which opened in 2012, has been luring bigger acts away from the Punchline by paying higher rates to comedians..
In coming weeks, the Improv has scheduled Pauly Shore, Tom Green and Harland Williams, all of whom used to headline at the Punchline.
The soon-to-close Punchline location is charming in a rickety sense. Many of the chairs are original. The wood paneling evokes “Urban Cowboy.” Old black-and-white 8x10 photos of comics of yore — many forgotten, some household names — still line the walls. The green room, packed with profane graffiti from bored comics, is not much larger than a broom closet.
Jerry Farber, a long-time Atlanta comic, said he performed at the Punchline as a headliner 26 times, many of those Thanksgiving weekend. “I liked it because it felt like well-worn jeans,” he said. “It wasn’t shiny like a lot of places. The place was just funky. Some of my best weeks ever were at the Punchline.” He hopes to return to stage at least one last time before the move.
“The new comedy clubs being built these days are more than 350 seats and have separate dining rooms that are chef driven,” said former owner DiNunzio. “They are nicer than the Hilderbrand location [which seats about 270]. But there is a lot of history there. The acoustics were really good there for some reason. Comics liked it.”
A move can be risky, he added. DiNunzio remembers a Punchline he had franchised in Jacksonville, Fla. in the 1980s doing really well until it relocated to a mall spot and business tanked.
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