Karaoke Snapshots

— Lisa, I have just found the spot where I will take you to do karaoke when you finally get your ass here. This place is beyond description.

And I will now describe it.

— It is 5 floors up in a ratty-looking grey building in Korea Town. You would not know it is there. There’s a sign out front saying “Music Studio – 5th floor” – but it’s like a sandwich board, not a neon sign. The building looks like an office building.

That’s because it IS an office building.

— You go in – normal office hallway, and get into the elevator with other people going to regular offices – and you go to the 5th floor. You get out. You are in a dingy hallway. It is industrial-grey, a long line of closed grey metal doors. This is not a plush-carpeted office. You follow the pointed arrow signs saying “KARAOKE” down this dingy grey hall – and some of the doors are open on either side. I peek in as I walk by and see flashes of things … an office filled with bolts of fabric … and a small man sitting at a sewing machine. There are other karaoke joints in New York that are, you know, storefronts – with regular bars – and you can rent little rooms in the back, and it all feels KIND of like going to a bar. Except you also do karaoke. THIS was totally different.

— This place is BYOB. Mkay? Weird. So we had gone into the Korean grocery across the street beforehand and bought a couple six packs, as well as 2 huge cans of Korean beer apiece. We were all set.

— At the end of dingy grey metal hallway – you come into what looks like … Oh, let me try to put it into words. There was so much that was incongruous so let me just tell you the different elements in the room:

1. Tile floor, like an elementary school, or any bureaucratic City of New York office – bleak, grey, nondescript.

2. There was a huge old-fashioned fire-engine-red phone booth standing in the corner. The phone itself was canary yellow.

3. There was a desk – behind which stood our Karaoke Enployee.

4. There was a refrigerator where you could buy Sprite, or orange juice.

5. There was a large TV suspended from the ceiling and an Usher video was playing over and over and over … with no sound.

6. Beyond this main area – was a long Alice in Wonderland corridor – with numbered doors on either side. Behind each door was a karaoke room.

We were the only customers in the joint. We were the only customers in the joint for the entire night and we were there for hours. It was hysterical. I’d leave “our room” to go find the bathroom or whatever, and then as I returned I could HEAR our vocal shenanigans from down that damn hallway – I could HEAR my friends shrieking “OH- OH LIVIN’ ON A PRAYYER … ” It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. We were in that room and we were all TOTALLY unselfconscious – just singing and drinking and howling with laughter and dancing around … and it was only when I walked outside that I realized … Wow. We’re actually out in the world right now …

— In the room there was a ring of padded couches, a table in the middle. We strewed our beer cans across the table. Above us was a multi-colored disco light – that was somehow attached (rhythmically) to whatever song we were singing. It was a robot light – turning, dipping – coloring the air. Oh – and there were also black lights. So we turned off all the lights. Our teeth gleamed. The karaoke books gleamed.

— We drank. We sang. We laughed so hard we cried. We got SO INTO what we were doing. Nobody was a killjoy.

— Oh! And I forgot to mention this: each room comes with two tambourines.

These karaoke owners know how to party.

We had so much fun with those tambourines. You have not experienced a Metallica song until you’ve heard it with a bit of tambourine shimmering in the background.

— We could not stop. We could have gone on for hours … but finally … we had to say, “Okay. It’s 11 pm. Time to go home.” Oh, and you pay by the hour. That’s where they get ya.

— I had no idea how hard “La La” was (by Ashlee Simpson, shame on me that I know that, but I love that song) until I tried to sing it. Holy crap. If you think I’m lying, try to sing it. Try to sing it. I dare ya.

— The duet version of Judas Priest’s “Painkiller” that we were treated to will live on in my memory.

FOREVER.

— As a group – we all did a pretty kick-ass “Creep”. I have to say. We rocked that song to its heart.

— I loved it when one of us would make a mistake with entering the number of the song we wanted – and then some random song would come on instead – a song which none of us had chosen … and yet somebody always stepped up to sing it. Hilarious. Like: “Okay, I hadn’t PLANNED on singing ‘Just the Way You Are’ tonight – but here I am doing so!”

I never realized how many songs I know.

— I also never realized how many songs I THINK I know but really only know the chorus to.

— Nirvana never gets old. At one point during “Lithium” I glanced around and all of us – literally all of us – were thrashing about. Thrashing! Singing at the tops of our lungs, yes, but also – just THRASHING. In the black light.

— “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is an unbelievably awesome song.

— Oh – and we were all women. It was so hilarious – there were times when it felt like the best slumber party EVER. With grown women. And Korean beer. And tambourines.

— HOURS later, with aching throats, we walked down the dingy grey hallway – all the doors closed now … sewing man gone home … went down the elevator … and out into the rainy night. Out onto the dingy busy streets of Korea Town.

You’d never know what psychedelic awesome SHRIEKING fun is to be had on the 5th floor of that dank stained building on 32nd Street in between 5th and Broadway.