- January 22, 2025
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Cristy Barrick sits on the couch inside her comedy club. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Cristy Barrick inside the Cristy B Comedy Club. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Inside the Cristy B Comedy Club. Photo by Brent Woronoff
The Cristy B Comedy Club rolls out the red carpet. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Some of the graduates' pictures of the first comedy class at the Cristy B Comedy Club. Photo by Brent Woronoff
The phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine,” can be traced, perhaps, back to the Bible. Proverbs 17:22 states, “A joyful heart is good medicine.”
Cristy Barrick, the owner of The Cristy B Comedy Club, 160 Cypress Point Pkwy, Suite A110, in Palm Coast, began her comedic journey when she was going through some rough patches in life.
“I found that going to comedy clubs helped me because for 90 minutes you forget about what’s going on in your world, because someone’s making you laugh.”
When she started performing, comedy became therapy.
This past April, Barrick bought Madcaps Comedy Club and turned it into the Cristy B Comedy Club. It’s a small venue. Barrick squeezes in about 50 guests with a shoehorn. Yet, through her years of experience producing comedy nights — she’s organized comedy shows at 75 different venues — she’s able to attract big-name celebrities to her intimate little club.
Jimmy JJ Walker, known as Kid Dy-No-Mite in the 1970s sit-com, “Good Times,” performed at the Cristy B in June. He’s returning in February. Former Saturday Night Live cast member Chris Kattan did four shows in two nights at the club on Jan. 3-4. Actor/comedian Bret Ernst and Kevin Farley — Chris Farley’s younger brother — both performed at the club in October. Orlando comedian Rauce Padgett is performing two shows a night on Jan. 24-25.
The club doesn’t always have familiar names, but it has professional comedians every Friday and Saturday with shows that usually include a host, a featured comedian and a headliner. The Cristy B also has Musical Bingo on Sundays, some shows on Thursdays, improv nights based on “Whose Line Is It Anyway” on most Wednesdays and frequent Open Mic nights.
On March 2, the club will begin its third eight-week comedy class, led by A. Ali Flores.
“I’ve taken a comedy class in Orlando,” Barrick said. “You learn how to write a joke, it helps with getting comfortable on stage, how to deliver. I got so much out of that class, and I wanted to share that with people here while this space is available.”
Retired Daytona Beach News-Journal motorsports writer Godwin Kelly performed stand-up comedy for 20 minutes at the Cristy B Comedy Club at an open-mic night in November. Kelly, a longtime Palm Coast resident, never did stand-up before. Now he plans to enroll in the club’s upcoming comedy class.
He said he could see stand-up becoming his retirement hobby. He plans to do a five-minute stint (which is the usual time limit) at the next open-mic night with his jokes focusing on his recent birthday, turning 69. Like Barrick, comedy has helped Kelly climb out of a dark place.
He had been the caregiver for his wife, Diane, who died on July 30. He said, after he was pulled aside and told it was time to call hospice care, one of the women who had been providing home health care for Diane, told him, “Let’s get you out of there for a night at the comedy club.”
“I was like, what comedy club? I didn't know we had a comedy club,” Kelly said. “So they took me to see Jimmy JJ Walker, and the guy before him was great too. He did crowd work, and he was really funny. And for an hour and a half, I wasn’t thinking about my situation, I was laughing my (butt) off at these two comedians. So, I've been back several times for different shows and I went to one open-mic night, and I was like, I can do this.”
In September, Kelly rented out the club to hold Diane’s celebration of life. Friends, family and co-workers got up one-by-one to share their memories of Diane. About two months later, he made his stand-up debut. His daughter, Kahlin Grant, a social media manager, made a graphic poster for the occasion and ran it on all of Kelly’s social media platforms.
“Godwin got 30 to 40 people out here just for him,” Barrick said. “And I had 17 open-mikers that night, so it was an amazing show.”
Kelly went last.
“It was good, because I was totally out of my comfort zone,” he said. “That's what I wanted. I wanted it to be like jumping out of an airplane. I wouldn't do that though. But this was similar, because it's like the great unknown, and you're up there all alone, and it's just you and your audience.”
Comedy has to be personal, Barrick says, and Kelly said some of his jokes were “gallows humor.”
“I talked about being a two-time widower,” he said. “Because I’m a two time widower. And I said if there's any women here looking for marital bliss followed by eternal life, just sign the sheet at the door.”
His act, like going to the comedy club for the first time, was a release.
Barrick had a similar start. Thirteen years ago, she decided to check an item off her bucket list by taking the stage at the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta.
“I had four minutes on stage and I was prepared,” she said. “It was the greatest feeling that you can imagine — scary exciting. The adrenaline running through your body, and you get out there in the lights. And I had a lot of friends and family in the audience supporting. I did a great job, and they invited me back, and I had six minutes, and I was not prepared. And I completely bombed on stage. And I thought, I will never do this again.”
But she did. About a year later, her friends talked her into entering a competition at Jackie Knight’s Comedy Club in St. Augustine. She won her round and went to the finals.
While working at Fuego Del Mar Cantina & Grill, which is now Tortugas Florida Kitchen in Flagler Beach, she convinced the owner to let her produce a weekly comedy show.
From there she started producing shows at Break-Awayz in Flagler Beach, Tomoka Brewing Company and 31 Supper Club in Ormond Beach and the Hilton Garden Inn in Palm Coast.
She still organizes shows at other venues, including at Crave’s Coastal Kitchen, where Jimmie Walker will perform on Feb. 19 to give him a larger venue. He’ll perform at the Cristy B on Feb. 21-22.
“It was a dream of mine to own my own club,” she said. “And it is also sometimes a nightmare because it's a lot of work. But when I'm sitting in here and I've got a room full of people laughing and enjoying themselves and having a good time, it's worth it.”
