BABS Comedy Club reopens with full bar 

On June 22, BABS Comedy Club temporarily closed for the summer so its owners could upgrade from two bodega coolers filled with canned cocktails, wine and beer to a full-service bar with hand-mixed cocktails, garnishes and an ice machine. 

Four months later, BABS Comedy Club hosted its grand reopening on Oct. 23 at 7316 Madison St. About three dozen audience members watched an evening of stand-up performances, sipping from a menu of 1920s-inspired cocktails at a bar custom built by the club’s owners. 

Friday’s reopening included stand-up performances by Syed Hasnain, Laura Hugg of Berwyn, plus Chicago residents Tyler Buckingham and Sarah Perry, the headliner. The celebration continued on Saturday with Kid-Prov improv, a standup comedy show in Spanish, and torture-themed improv (which is also playing Halloween night at 8 p.m.). 

“It’s good to be open and back serving laughter to the community again,” Emily Ramirez, owner of BABS Comedy Club, told the Review. “I was nervous about how attended the shows might be,” she added, since she was so focused on bar construction that she didn’t have much time to market the grand reopening. 

On Saturday, BABS saw twice the number of people who attended Friday. And Ramirez said the nights saw 30-to-40% more sales than the average weekend at the comedy club.

“Prices for a premium, hand-poured cocktail are obviously different from beer,” Ramirez said. And increasing the bar’s revenue was one of the main reasons Ramirez wanted to install a bar, she previously told the Review.

Ramirez created the menu of house cocktails herself, inspired by the 1920s. She wanted to offer a lineup of drinks that she hasn’t seen in other businesses in the area, especially bourbon cocktails. 

“I’ve been inspired by this building from the very beginning to make sure everything I do seems like it could’ve been there originally,” Ramirez said of the structure that’s over 100 years old. And the drink menu is no exception. 

Ramirez said her favorite house cocktail is the Belly Laugh, made with Bulleit bourbon, Benedictine liqueur, chocolate bitters and orange bitters. On Friday night, several people ordered the BABS Bee’s Knees with Tanqueray gin, lemon juice and honey syrup.  

“A lot of cocktails were created because a lot of prohibition-era liquor was so bad that drinks were drowned in syrups,” Ramirez said. “I think comedy and prohibition have a really inextricable link — they’re both on the fringe and have an underground feel.” 

On Friday, Ramirez helped BABS’ bartender make drinks — the first time she’d done so, though she’s had a bartender license for a few years. On Saturday, another beginner bartender and regular BABS performer worked behind the new bar with Ramirez. 

When asked what people can expect from the new BABS Comedy Club, Ramirez said, “They should expect to have the same great experience with a really elevated cocktail experience.” She added, “They’ll probably get to see me be even more flustered behind the bar because I’m learning as I go.”  

She said employees have already changed some workflow processes after reopening weekend and are navigating any hiccups as they finish construction — mainly shelving behind the bar, backed by mercury glass and soft lighting.  

“That’s going to be a big undertaking, but it’s something we can do in phases and while we’re open,” Ramirez said. She also plans to add trim to the bar and a brass foot rail, as well as another layer of grout to the tile on the floor behind the bar. “Everything we do, we want to do it in a way that would be commercially viable.”  

Though the couple originally planned to have the new bar open at the end of August, multiple deaths in the family set back the opening. 

“The timeline rested on our shoulders, which means anything that complicated our lives would complicate construction,” Ramirez said. “We had a lot of grief. It has a quality of not only taking your time away but creating fog and exhaustion. There were many days when we were paralyzed with grief. We were still working, but not as our optimal selves.”  

Ramirez said the hardest part of constructing the new bar was the plumbing, opening the wall behind the bar and navigating the existing pipes. 

“A lot of times when you open up a wall, you’ll see decades of past install,” Ramirez said. “It takes a lot of time, creativity and thought to navigate.” She added, “I think a lot of people think, ‘You had to put in a water line.’” But it was a matter of installing four sinks, a water heater, filtration systems, an ice machine in the basement, plus draining and venting that starts in the basement and ends at the top of the second floor. 

“To be honest, I was starting to feel kind of pessimistic about whether or not all of this work would be worth it,” Ramirez said about the new bar. “We were really in the worst throes of it. I have such a hard time describing the scale of this. We, my husband and I, are used to working hard, but this was insane.”  

Ramirez’s husband, Chase Maness, is an engineer with experience in plumbing and electric. Together, they’ve been restoring properties for 25 years. 

Ramirez and Maness renovated much of the Madison Street storefront and upstairs apartments — one which they live out of — after they bought it in 2023. BABS Comedy Club opened two years ago in Forest Park. Ramirez used revenue from the comedy club to finance equipment for the new bar, though she originally wanted to open BABS with a full bar. 

“It’s a really good feeling knowing you’re enhancing a piece of history and making it better,” Ramirez said. She added that using her own money, rather than investor funding, allowed her to have more freedom in construction. “The money that opened this business and the money that continues to build this business is our personal money, so I have no one to answer to.”  

Every Wednesday, BABS hosts an improv comedy jam and every Thursday is a standup open mic. Every Friday, BABS Comedy Club has a new lineup of local standups. Saturdays are for improvisation, with Kid-Prov at 3 p.m. and BABS’ house improv team at 8 p.m.  

“Improv is our crown jewel,” Ramirez said. 

BABS also hosts special events, classes and workshops. Learn more at https://www.babscomedyclub.com/.