Interview · moment 2 of 17
How Giannis Started and the Bar Four Days
from It Ends Bad (with Yannis Pappas) · #67
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
3 minGuest
Tim recalls first seeing Giannis Pappas performing at Bar Four in Park Slope in 2011, and the two riff on how comedy used to require real skill versus today's crowds who clap just to feel part of a scene, plus how New York used to dictate national culture before art became city-of-origin niche bubbles.
- 0:49Giannis Pappas made Tim feel inadequate when he first saw him perform in 2011, just six months into his own comedy career.
- 1:10A lot of people in comedy are worse than just regular funny people you know outside the industry.
- 1:29Tim points out you don't need to be funny anymore to make it in comedy—warehouse workers can get on Comedy Central now.
- 1:40Giannis ran a show called Bar Four in Park Slope where Tim first saw him perform.
- 2:18Giannis would sometimes do 20 minutes on sneakers between other comics, which wasn't a gimmick or trick.
- 2:29Modern comedy often functions like a magic trick—audiences laugh and move their mouths but nothing funny is actually happening.
- 2:55New York used to dictate taste and culture for the entire country, but that's changed.
- 3:09Comedians from elsewhere found safe places to do their art and clap for each other, creating what counts as funny without native New Yorker approval.
- 3:21Anyone trying to be a rock and roll artist or entertainer used to have to come to New York and impress the natives to make it.