Formats: the comedy room, the retro club, the martini bar

1984 — 2024

Snickerz: the comedy decades: Fort Wayne's stand-up era had one address: Snickerz Comedy Club, 5535 Saint Joe Road, in the Marketplace of Canterbury beside Piere's. The business record dates Snickerz Inc. to January 1, 1984, incorporated June 24, 1985, with Kevin Ferguson as president. The club ran for more than three decades — the Fort Wayne Comedy Club's own account of the scene says Snickerz "operated for over 32 years" — booking the national touring circuit into a suburban club room; photographs of the closed building show the windows papered with portraits of the headliners who had played it, Robin Williams, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, and Don Rickles among them. Snickerz closed by the mid-2020s, and the room's trade passed to a successor at the same address, Summit City Comedy Club.

Flashback: the retro format: The Landing's second nightlife era ran on nostalgia as a format. Flashback on the Landing, at 118 West Columbia Street — founded, per Stan Liddell's obituary, by Liddell himself, and operated by Todd Smith — billed itself as Fort Wayne's only retro dance club, playing the 1970s, '80s, '90s, and today across a dance floor, stages, and a second story. WANE reported its end: on December 29, 2017, Smith announced that both Flashback and his Early Bird's Ultra Lounge, on Wells Street, would close on January 6, 2018 — Flashback, the station said, after 17 years, while directory listings credited the room with 18 years in business; both figures are printed, the record holding the two. The format outlived the address: later in 2018 Flashback reopened as Flashback Live in the former Early Bird's space on Wells Street, and listings into the 2020s still carried it as the city's retro dance club.

Club Soda: the supper club returns: The last format of the century was the first format of the postwar decades, revived. Club Soda opened in 1999 at 235 East Superior Street, in the former Indiana Textiles Building near Headwaters Park — in Fort Wayne Magazine's account, a martinis-and-jazz joint unlike anything the city had seen for several decades, a supper-club room of steaks, martinis, and live jazz. That a single 1999 opening could be reviewed as a resurrection measures the whole middle of this section: the hotel lounges of the 1950s, the dance floors that replaced them, and the slow return, at the century's end, of the room where the evening began with dinner.

Sources:

1. Better Business Bureau business profile, Snickerz Inc. — business started January 1, 1984; incorporated June 24, 1985; 5535 Saint Joe Road; Kevin Ferguson, president.
2. Fort Wayne Comedy Club, "Our Story" — Snickerz's run of "over 32 years" as the measure of Fort Wayne's stand-up scene; contemporary photographs of the closed Snickerz building and its headliner portraits (2025–2026).
3. WANE (NewsChannel 15), as reported December 29, 2017 — the announced January 6, 2018 closings of Flashback and Early Bird's, Flashback "after 17 years"; directory listings for Flashback on the Landing (118 West Columbia Street, "18 years in business"); Whatzup listings (2022) for Flashback Live as the city's retro dance club on Wells Street.
4. Obituary of H. Stanley Liddell Jr. (2013) — Liddell as founder of Flashback's on the Landing; Business People, "His Secret to Success" — Todd Smith's operation of Flashback and Early Bird's Ultra Lounge.
5. FortWayne.com, "Best of: Fort Wayne Cocktail Hours" — Club Soda's 1999 opening, the Indiana Textiles Building on Superior Street, and the martini-and-jazz format; The Bradley Hotel guide — Club Soda, 235 East Superior Street, "supper-club vibe… live jazz."