South Bend Bone closes

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 4th, 2008

It was a short item in Thursday’s South Bend Tribune:

MISHAWAKA — A local comedy club that’s been open for about 15 years has closed its doors.

The manager of the Funny Bone Comedy Club in Mishawaka told WSBT News a dispute over money led to the closing. She said the owners of the nationally based comedy club chain couldn’t come to an agreement with the building’s landlord in Mishawaka.

It’s still possible the club could reopen in the future under a different name. In the meantime, 28 people are now without jobs.

The Funny Bone opened in 1993 on the south side of South Bend at the old Scottsdale Mall. It moved to the 100 Center in Mishawaka in 2004.

We have no idea what “a dispute over money” means. Some folks have taken the closing of this club, after a decade and a half of operation, and news of the closure of other clubs here and there (in Rochester and Buffalo, for instance) to be signs of the apocalypse. We’re not so sure.

In the case of the two upstate New York venues (and in the case of the recent closure of the Bone in Boise, ID), they closed not because folks weren’t coming through the doors. They closed for reasons unrelated to the relative health of the economy or the comedy business in particular. (The economy is far stronger than the media would have you believe– not only are we not in a recession, but we are experiencing growth. Modest growth, but growth nonetheless.)

And, along with the news of comedy clubs closing is news of comedy clubs opening. We’ve reported on them here in this publication over the past few years.

Having lived through the comedy boom of the 1980’s– and the subsequent bust of the early- to mid-90’s– we are understandably cautious when making predictions. But having paid close attention to the business since at least 1999, we are convinced that the business is the healthiest it’s been in some time.

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