Chicago is America's funniest city 
 
 Chicago is seriously funny. 
 
 A new study by the University of Colorado at Boulder ranks Chicago as America’s funniest city, beating out laugh riots Boston and Atlanta to claim the top spot. Researchers hailed Chicagoans for their witty banter and observational humor, specifically citing the local penchant for poking fun at the brutal weather and the CTA. 
 
 “The jokes that Chicagoans do tend to tell often feature deadpan and quick-witted humor, much of it directed at the foibles and frustrations of living in Chicago,” according to the study, which was released Sunday. 
 
 Researchers at the university's Humor Research Lab created an algorithm to evaluate several data sets, including the number of comedy clubs in each city, the number of famous comedians born there, the number of well-known humorist who tweet from there and traveling comedians’ ratings of local audiences. They also considered how frequently residents visit comedy websites. 
 
 They then surveyed more than 900 people living in the top 10 cities as determined by the algorithm. Researchers asked residents about the kinds of funny entertainment they enjoyed, whether they considered humor an important quality in friends and significant others and subjected them to a personality test. They also had participants describe their city’s sense of humor and recount their favorite joke. 
 
 And, despite their funny ranking, it seems Chicagoans are lousy joke tellers. 
 
 “For a place that’s the funniest city in the country, Chicago doesn’t seem to boast a lot of jokes,” the study states. “Many Chicago residents surveyed noted that they could not think of any zingers, since they prefer to mine observational humor from the situations in which they find themselves. Such remarks seem to fit with the city’s professional comedy scene, since the city is known as a mecca for improv and stand-up.” 
 
 Other cities in the Top 10 were: Boston, Atlanta, Washington, Portland, Ore., New York, Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco and Seattle. Indianapolis, Detroit and Milwaukee were 25th, 34th and 39th respectively. 
 
 The study was led by Peter McGraw, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at CU-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. The project grew out of McGraw’s new book, “The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny,” which he co-authored with journalist Joel Warner. 
 
 “The result was a window into the humor profiles of each of the top 10 cities,” said McGraw in a statement provided by the university. “Boston residents balance high-brow intellectualism with drunken rowdiness while Washington, D.C., finds humor in the absurdities of political systems. Portlanders are just plain weird.” 
 
 sstclair@tribune.com 
 
 Twitter @stacystclair ||||| Working a room of 6,000 doctors and their families at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Florida, dapper comedian Dan Nainan is breaking out his best material — and every bit of it is G-rated. “People always tell me, ‘Your dad is from India and your mom is from Japan — so that makes you half-Asian!’ ” He waits a beat before dropping the punch line: “Where do they think India is: Antarctica?” The crowd roars with laughter. Sexual innuendos and off-color obscenities won’t go over with this buttoned-down bunch — these folks prefer their jokes as wholesome as apple pie. 
 
 And you thought you couldn’t hear a joke these days without somebody dropping an F-bomb or making dick jokes. Less than a year after both scandal and age dethroned Bill Cosby, the dean of G-rated comedy, a new crop of clean-cut comedians are proving that “above the neck” stuff can do as well as material that’s below the belt. (A line we stole from Nainan.) Their names may not ring a bell just yet, but comedians like Nainan, Jenna Kim Jones and Narinder Singh are gaining traction in the stand-up circuit, the way Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres did in clean comedy’s heyday in the 1980s. And instead of beer-soaked comedy cellars, they’re getting gigs at Mormon megachurches in Utah, a society of morticians in California, Donald Trump’s ritzy golf course and even a black-tie gala for President Obama. 
 
 Studies reveal that dumping racism, homophobia and other touchy topics can be a boon for creativity. 
 
 It may seem like a shocking development in an industry that Billboard has gauged at $300 million annually, one built on explicit punch lines, gender bashing and fart jokes, says Adam Christing, author of Comedy Comes Clean: A Hilarious Collection of Wholesome Jokes, Quotes and One-Liners. And it’s not like the nasty and naughty has disappeared — Kevin Hart is bleeping his way to the highest-grossing comedy tour of all time this year. But the growing clean scene includes Jim Gaffigan, the so-called King of Clean Comedy, who’s also among the top-grossing touring comics, according to Pollstar. And then there’s South African Trevor Noah, the new, fresh face of The Daily Show who has been dubbed the “cuddly” guy you can take your sweet ol’ grandma to see, says Christing. (Cuddly as he is, Noah declined OZY’s requests for comment.) 
 
 Technology has played a part in some comics coming clean, says Noam Dworman, owner of the Comedy Cellar in New York City, specifically mobile phones and video cameras that can discreetly record shows. “If somebody blurts something out in the wrong way, it can be career threatening,” Dworman notes (just ask Michael Richards, Kramer of Seinfeld fame, whose racist remarks went viral in 2006). 
 
 And while the political correctness police have put pressure on some raunchy comedians, studies reveal that dumping racism, homophobia and other touchy topics can be a boon for creativity. Singh, a Sikh comedian in New York City who riffs on relationships, religion and being marginalized at school, says he’s forced himself to dig deeper and find truly edgy material rather than rely on cheap “yo mama” jokes. 
 
 While cable powerhouse Comedy Central’s target demographic is 18- to 49-year-old males who generally revel in raunchy stuff, there’s a “tremendous” untapped market for clean comedy beyond television, says Nainan, who’s itching to open the country’s first chain of clean-comedy clubs. There’s the corporate world, with venues like cruise ships, business functions and conventions, not to mention a whole wild world of more conservative countries where dealing in raunch could get you arrested. For corporate comic Tom Mabe, clean equals green. Mabe says he rakes in more than $5,000 for his 45-minute shows around the country — compared with a few hundreds bucks for a headliner in a typical comedy club. 
 
 There’s also the path of podcast comedy, where entrepreneurial comedians can expand their audiences to those who might not attend a live show. Mormon comedian Jenna Kim Jones earned the coveted title of “swear police” when she helped bleep out curse words during her gig at The Daily Show. Now, her independent comedy podcast gets 50,000 downloads per month. 
 
 While they may not be posting risqué selfies like Chelsea Handler, clean comics can have rough edges. Noah was called out about tweets some people found racist and sexist when he was named Daily Show host. Nainan was charged with simple assault after he punched a journalist following a show in Washington, D.C. But those transgressions haven’t slowed the rise of clean comedy, which has drawn rave reviews from some powerful folks, including Obama. And while funny doesn’t have to be filthy, as Nainan says, POTUS got a little naughty after he saw Nainan perform: “Dan,” he quipped, “is f***ing hilarious.”
– Need a laugh? Head to Chicago. A new study finds the Windy City is also the funniest one in the US, according to the Chicago Tribune. "We found humor often has a local flavor," the lead researcher says. "The jokes that get laughs at comedy clubs in Denver seem unlikely to fly with a cartoon editor at the New Yorker." Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Humor Research Lab created an algorithm that looked at, among other things, a city's: number of comedy clubs and comedy radio stations number of famous comedians born there number of "funny tweeters" living there ratings of local audiences by traveling comedians frequency of visits to comedy websites and comedy-related web searches by residents When researchers determined a top 10, they surveyed 900 residents per city, asking them about their feelings on humor and comedic entertainment, their take on the city's sense of humor, and their favorite joke. "The jokes that Chicagoans do tend to tell often feature deadpan and quick-witted humor, much of it directed at the foibles and frustrations of living in Chicago," such as the weather and the transit system, researchers found. "They prefer to mine observational humor from the situations in which they find themselves. Such remarks seem to fit with the city’s professional comedy scene, since the city is known as a mecca for improv and stand-up." The rest of the top 5: Boston, Atlanta, Washington, and Portland. Click for the full top 10 and their complete humor profiles.