Looking for laughs on a Tuesday night?

We’ve found the spot — Chicago Underground Comedy at the Beat Kitchen

By Brenna Ehrlich

It’s Tuesday night, and the back room of the Beat Kitchen is packed. Hipsters loll back in their chairs at the cabaret tables and wave down the waitress for another round of beers, or something from the Beat Kitchen’s extensive menu. They’re all are out in droves to see Chicago Underground Comedy’s weekly stand-up show.

“Out boozin’ on a Tuesday…” chastises Lauren Bishop, guest stand-up comic at tonight’s show, pointing at a bearded man in a trucker cap.

Yes, the Beat Kitchen does serve alcohol, and yes most of the patrons have consumed their fair share, but Chicago Underground Comedy is about much more than getting liquored up.

Local stand-up comedian Tony Sam started Chicago Underground Comedy in May of 2005. Originally, it was going to be called “The Underground,” a nod to the independent nature of the show.

“We wanted to make a really awesome showcase with an indie rock feel,” Sam says. “Something that’s not kitschy or corny, but really hip.”

So the comedian handpicked 16 of the best Chicago comics — innovative, creative stand-ups who aren’t afraid to take chances — and launched the show. It was an immediate success; every Tuesday the room was packed.

Still, Chicago Underground Comedy is not about appealing to the masses.

“There are two philosophies — one, that the audience works for you, and if they don’t get your jokes, then it’s their fault,” says Sam. “Or there’s the fact that you work for the audience. You’re gonna do whatever you can to make these people laugh. So, it’s kinda like white-collar comedy versus the blue-collar. The white-collar comedians, which I feel like a lot of people in Chicago are, they want to have this integrity with what they’re doing, and regardless of whether the audience likes it, they’re going to stick to their guns and do it.”

Sam believes in a happy medium between these two philosophies. He wants to make people laugh, but he laments, “People like to hear things that they can relate to — sex and relationships, that’s your common denominator. I just don’t want to talk about it. I feel like it’s so overdone.”

Sam, like his brand of comedy, is rather unorthodox. After graduating from Florida Atlantic University with a degree in molecular and marine biology, Sam worked at an aquarium in the Cayman Islands and spent some time in Florida caring for sea turtles. One day on the beach, he said to himself, “What am I doing with my life?”

Sam told the turtles sayonara and drove to Chicago, where he enrolled in the Improv Olympics program and took writing classes at Second City. Sam had always loved comedy, and had dreamt of auditioning for Second City in high school. Many years and several sea animals later, Sam recently won the 2007 Chicago Comedy Awards’ “Mark Sinclair Memorial Award for Most Innovative Chicago Comedian,” and has been praised by the local media.

He spends his days working as a research associate at Children’s Memorial Hospital. “I think I’m the only comedian in Chicago who’s also a scientist,” Sam muses.

Still, comedy is his one true love. “Once you do it, you get bit by it, that instant gratification from something that you wrote, you worked on, that you’re presenting it,” he says. “When it’s really good, when people laugh at it, that’s better than sex. ’Cause I don’t have a lot of (sex), I’m assuming…”

Judging by the size of the crowd at the Beat Kitchen, the thrill is not gone. Nearly two years after its maiden voyage, Chicago Underground Comedy is still going strong; people are still coming out to “booze on a Tuesday.” And why not?

“There’s nothing to do on Tuesday. Let’s make people want to go out,” proclaims Sam. “I don’t want to be that person that just lives their life based on when they have to get up in the morning. You don’t want to end your life and say, ‘Well, I was well-rested.”

So the question becomes: Do you stay home on Tuesday night, watch the CW and go to bed at 11? Or do you go Underground at the Beat Kitchen, laugh it up and live a little? It’s up to you.

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