TACOMA, Wash — “See that name on the sign?" says a man in camouflage. "That's me.”
Nate Jackson is manning the door to his recently re-opened Super Funny Comedy Club on a Saturday night and witnessing a dream come true. His bartenders are busy and, in a room that can hold 600 people, his headlining act is so happy he’s going 20 minutes over his usually hour-long set.
“This is one of the biggest comedy clubs in the country,” says Jackson. “We have some of the biggest acts, the biggest names in the country. We have Mark Curry onstage right now from ‘Hanging With Mr. Cooper’. We're trying to do it right, you know what I mean?"
Jackson says he could have opened a club anywhere, but he's a Lacey native. He grew up half an hour from the club which is attached to a Holiday Inn off I-5.
“Excellence was kind of the expectation in my household and I was the one that was always in trouble,” says Jackson. “My parents were like ‘We don't know what he's going to do, how he's going to do it, we just know it's gonna be good at it'. And then comedy found me.”
20 years ago Jackson did stand-up on a dare. Since then he’s been on MTV, HBO, BET, and AOTW, all over the world.
He has performed at every kind of comedy club and everywhere he went, he always paid attention.
“The best things from everywhere we have here,” he says.
That includes a stage big enough to host Netflix specials, a podcast studio, and a separate green room for headliners. That last one is something Mark Curry appreciates.
“We're simple,” says Curry “We want a nice green room. We want a TV. I wanted oatmeal cookies and Fuji water and fruit and that's what I got.”
Jackson wants his club to be a place where local comedians can work on their acts.
“They don't get big and they don't turn into mega-star without having a place to work out and to grow and be groomed,” he says.
Jackson is a step closer to mega-star status, now that’s he got a role on the NBC hit comedy “Young Rock”, where he plays Junkyard Dog. Jackson says Sylvester Ritter was his favorite wrestler growing up so when it came time to audition for the role he gave it everything he had.
“I put on the chains, and I came in to ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ playing and I was doing "Grab Them Cakes" and head-butting and growling,” he says.
“I went hard because in real life he passed away at an early age so I wanted to pay homage and respect to what he built and let his lineage reach a brand new generation of people”
As people get seated for the second show, Jackson wears his owner’s hat, even bussing tables to move things along.
“We're just getting them in now,” he says. “ Just getting them in."
Then Nate Jackson wears his emcee hat, multitasking like any local business owner bringing his lifelong dream home.
“It sounds kind of corny," he says, "like a bumper sticker or a refrigerator magnet, but home is where the heart is".
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