CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The world of comedy is mourning the loss of a man who helped to launch many young careers out of his Summit County Comedy Club. The family of Pete Barakat announced that the co-owner of The Funny Stop in Cuyahoga Falls passed this week at the age of 65.
A sign on the door of the club lets patrons know that this Wednesday, there will be no “open mic night” following the passing of the club’s co-owner Pete Barakat.
Comedian Dave Landau said Pete loved nothing more than giving aspiring young comics a shot while testing their mettle, so it's a shame the club won't be hosting an open mic night.
“He was a very loud man, very obnoxious; he actually heckled the comedians on stage, which I found pretty amazing,” Landau said. “It actually ended up being part of his charm, part of the reason why I ended up loving him.”
A native of Lebanon who came to the U.S. in 1979, Barakat purchased the Akron Hilarities Comedy Club with his brother in 2000. Comedian Charlie Wiener has known Pete from the beginning of his journey into comedy.
“He was of the old group of comedy club owners that had personality, and the club reflected that personality,” Wiener said. “As corporations took over all of the comedy clubs, there were so few left that actually had a Pete, and he was like one of the last.”
As news of Barakat’s passing made its way through the comedy world, it hit former headliners like Jim Florentine hard.
“Of all the club owners, this one’s going to hurt the most that we lost because Pete and his family and his wife are just such great people,” Florentine said. “I’ve been around a long time, and a lot of club owners are sleazy and will short you money or are just shady; the first time I met Pete, I’m like, 'I like this guy,' it felt like I knew him forever, total straight shooter, one of my favorite club owners in the country.”
Florentine said he was appearing at the club last fall when the Guardians were in the playoffs, and he was going to Uber to see a game.
“He goes, ‘Nah, just take my truck.’ I go, 'Really?' He goes, ‘Yeah, just take my truck for the day and then bring it back tonight.' No club owner would do that,” Florentine said.
He also told News 5 of the time his early morning Uber failed to show up to take him to the airport, and he was about to miss his flight.
“And he picked up the phone, and he goes, ‘I’ll be there in six minutes.’ Just woke up out of bed and drove me to the airport. No club owner ever would do that,” Florentine said
A heart not often seen by the young comics, said Landau.
“If he sort of liked you, it was always like Tommy Thompson’s here, you suck, you’re terrible,’ and that just meant that he thought you were pretty good. And then if he didn’t like you, he just said that he hated you,” Landau said.
Wiener also found himself in conversations with those young comedians trying to get a read on Pete.
“I remember a young open mic’er coming to me going, ‘I don’t think Pete likes me.’ I said why not? He said ‘he yells at me all of the time.’ I go, 'That means he likes you,'" Wiener said. "If he doesn’t yell at you, he doesn’t care about you. He’s yelling at you because he wants you to be better. If he’s telling you to do something, he has a reason. He’s not being hard to get along with, he sees something in you, and if you don’t see it sooner or later, he’s going to give up, but he won’t because he’s Pete.”
Sometimes the headliners, though, thought he could scale it back a little.
“He gave every comedian an opportunity, he gave every comic a chance, and he let people just get up on stage and do what they wanted to do, sometimes irritatingly so,” said Landau. “Like sometimes you’d be doing a headline set on a Saturday night, and he’d be ‘babe, we got 19 guest sets tonight. 45 people go on stage in front of you, no big deal.’”
Wiener had a similar take.
“It was a little maddening to us who were headliners. You’d come in to do a show, and there were five open mic’ers there going, ‘Well, we’re also supposed to get time tonight,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, when am I supposed to get my time, I’m the one getting paid, and they’re paying to see me,’" Wiener said. "But Pete was just that guy who always wanted to help everybody.”
Landau said he helped him for sure.
“He was one of the very first clubs to headline me, the first club outside of Michigan for sure and because of that, other clubs saw that I was headlining, and they were willing to give me a chance because Pete gave me a chance and it wasn’t once a year,” said Landau. “He was letting me do it twice a year, three times a year. And then once I started selling tickets and he could make money, it became as many times a year as I wanted.”
He gave the budding comedians confidence in themselves, and he gave a veteran like Wiener something when he didn’t have a home club.
“He was just a man of huge heart; he loved comedy, he loved comedians, he loved his wife more, and he loved his boys even more than that,” Wiener said.
Watch live and local news any time:
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
