This athletics shop is giving New York City comedy clubs a run for their money.
Of all the venues across Manhattan to present a two-night, eight-show, 30-comic festival, the historic Paragon Sports store off Union Square is quite the unlikely host.
But that is indeed what will be happening at the 116-year-old family-owned specialty shop next week during the first of a potentially annual festival produced by David Levine and Ethan Mansoor, the 25-year-old duo behind Underground Overground Comedy.
Since April 2021, the Manhattan natives have organized comedy shows in surprising places — rearranging merchandise, tables and more to set up seats and makeshift stages in improbable venues. So far, an Alphabet City laundromat, an Upper East Side gym, Lower East Side staple Economy Candy, Katz’s Delicatessen, Astor Place Hairstylists and more have welcomed comics, joking about love and sex and private jets among the racks and dryers and pastrami.
The shows have consistently sold out, and, at one point, there was an 11,000-person waitlist.
“What people love our shows for is going to places that they grew up going to in a different context,” explained Mansoor of their popularity. “If you talk to a lot of New Yorkers, they’ll be like ‘Oh my God I got my first pair of skis [at Paragon] in 1980.”
“It’s not just a show — it’s an event,” Levine noted, adding that they strive to offer audiences not just stand-up in strange locations but all-in-one evenings of entertainment in spaces that are intrinsically, inseparably part of the fabric of New York City.
Often, admission comes with on-theme perks to match: Tickets to the Paragon festival also include Joe’s Pizza.
Now, the pair — who met as children, on the P.S. 6 chess team — are leveling up with what will be by far their most ambitious production yet and “our biggest event to date,” Mansoor told The Post.
While they’ve done separate shows on every floor of Paragon over the course of the eight shows they’ve hosted there since last February, their upcoming laugh lineup will be a feat of scheduling involving sets happening on every floor simultaneously.
So far, their first fest is off to a good start: Within days of tickets for the May 15 and 16 shows going live on April 17, all 1,200 had sold out at $65 a pop — and without fans even knowing who’s slated to perform.
The lineup secrecy is typical of Levine and Mansoor, who avoid using talent to produce their shows, instead relying on their reputation for parading out big names — including “Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood Jr. and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Marcello Hernandez — and offering a unique experience in an unexpected, nostalgia-rich setting.
Paragon said they’re excited to be involved and lend their sprawling square footage and iconic New York brand to a purpose beyond retail.
Ever since making it through COVID, the company has tried especially hard “to create unique events that bring in new customers,” said Zachary Blank, Paragon’s fourth-generation CEO, whose great-grandfather started the business in 1908.
Working with Underground Overground has, so far, been a “phenomenal experience,” Blank added. “They bring in an awesome crowd. Everybody’s super nice and extremely polite on the way out, which doesn’t always happen.”
With their venue host excited, all their tickets sold and pre-press secured, Levine and Mansoor don’t have much left to do for the festival but wait — and worry that one of their headliners will get last-minute comps to sit courtside at a Knicks game and drop out.
“We can’t blame them,” said Levine of any comic who cancels with such an excuse, “‘but I’ve been praying that the Knicks lose.”
