For 50 years, the Comedy Store has been a club in need of comics, and a place for comics in need of a club. The relationship is as plain as the writing on the walls of the storied venue, cluttered with the names of its biggest stars dotting its black exterior in white cursive. But that only tells a fraction of the story of a venue that’s anchored itself in comedy history, creating a magnetic pull that brings new stars in and keeps the veterans coming back.
On the top floor of the store, the office of its legendary owner, the late Mitzi Shore, sits unchanged from the last day she left it. The pills in her drawer, papers on her desk and photos on her wall haven’t been touched since she stopped running the club in 2002. Since her death in 2018, staff members who work at the club say that her spirit is ever-present, especially Peter Shore, her son who took over as the Store’s CEO 20 years ago.
For the Shore family, that pain was also personal, from the financial woes to the fallout between Shore and his brothers Scott and comedian Pauly Shore over the future of the Store which ultimately ended in a settlement. Currently, Pauly does not have a role in running the club, though he does still perform at the club locations in L.A. and La Jolla.
“To this day, as big as Rogan is, you pop in any of his podcasts, you dial it in to any time that he talks about my mom, what does he do? He starts crying,” Shore says. “No matter how big he is, no matter how powerful and influential he is, at the core of his being is how my mother and that Store has touched him.”
“There’s agents and managers out there who are promoting what they’re calling stand-up comics, who have these wild presences on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, doing these bits,” Shore said. “And they’ve got hundreds of thousands of followers … but we’re like, they’re not comics. Come and work out, go work out at the Potluck. Because there is nothing to substitute that live experience.