About this tour
Austin's comedy scene packs into a handful of downtown blocks, and in the last few years it has become one of the biggest stand-up destinations in the country. This short walk runs from a 1970s musical-comedy institution on Sixth Street to the club that put Austin on the national comedy map, passing a bare-brick stand-up room, the grand old theater that hosts the city's comedy festival, and an indie home of Austin's improv and sketch scene. It's about two-thirds of a mile on foot — a tour of how a city better known for guitars quietly built a comedy corridor to rival its music one. Each stop here is a working room with a real history, not a lineup: the buildings and the institutions are the story.