Out: Seattle comedy club Giggles. In: Seattle strip club Jiggles? Not without a permit fight

Word from the Pacific Northwest has it that one of Seattle's longtime comedy clubs, Giggles, is trying to be revived by its original owner, but as Jiggles, a strip club.

Here is the local TV report on the matter. Roll it while you got it!


 

The Seattle Times points out that Bob Davis, who founded Giggles in 1985 and repurchased the property in the city's University District after Terry Taylor sold and closed it in May, has fought area cities over the years to open other strip clubs.

Every comedian who has worked Seattle has a Terry Taylor story, and some of them have weighed in on the comment thread of The Seattle Comedy Blog. Heneghen's comment cracked me up, as he was wont to do with his stand-up comedy when I was living and performing in Seattle in the late 1990s.

My experience with Taylor was limited, since I was a Comedy Underground guy. Taylor had his favorites among the local stand-ups, and comics who regularly worked the Underground were not among them. It was an us-or-them thing. But I did stop by Giggles for the Sunday open mics, as well as selected weekend nights to sit in the back whenever a headliner I wanted to see visited town. Giggles usually booked higher-profile name comedians than the Underground, which always favored the cheaper up-and-comers.

One thing I never quite figured out about Taylor was how he could be a Mormon guy who lectured all of the comedians about working clean, who then somehow managed to work himself into many of the stand-up shows and once onstage, told dirty jokes. But that was Giggles. Farewell, Giggles.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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One thought on “Out: Seattle comedy club Giggles. In: Seattle strip club Jiggles? Not without a permit fight

  1. I never like watching a comedy venue shut down, but if one ever deserved to die, it was Giggles. Didn’t respect the comics, didn’t respect their audiences; it was the kind of club that after spending an evening there, made people not want to go out and see more live comedy.
    I shall not miss Giggles.

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