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Matt Chiaramonte |
You and your friends walk into the club. It’s filled with the same old crowd. Some are sad and just want to feel happy for a few hours, some are celebrating bachelor and bachelorette parties, and some are there for the first time.
You pony up to the stage and a muffled voice comes over the speaker and brings on the first act. The performer wraps their hands around that cold metal and starts to do their thing. The crowd is nervous at first, the drunker patrons are still talking but the performer plugs on, trying to get some sort of a reaction. This continues as one by one these sad entertainers with dead eyes come onto the stage and do the same routine they’ve done so many times before. It’s all numb now, but they know what the crowd wants and they give it to them.

One day some big shot is going to walk into that club and make all their dreams come true. Some schlubby business man with expensive sweatpants will watch them do their thing from the VIP section and before they know it, people are paying $300 a ticket just to watch the same routine they were doing for drunken idiots back home. That’s the dream anyway.
I guess the point is… support local art. When you and your friends step into that club, give your full attention to those poor saps dancing around on stage, you never know if one of them will be famous one day. And even if they don’t end up making it in the big time, show them some love because what they are doing up there is important. Besides, it could be worse. They could be strippers.
Chiaramonte is a stand-up comic, writer, actor, and hard working staff member of the Laugh Factory Chicago.