Karaoke Night

The other night I had a decision to make after coming home from work. I was tired, needed to clean the apartment, shower, and sleep. But Jacqui and her friends invited me into Manhattan for a night of Karaoke. I really didn’t feel like it.

But then, of course, I realized that I knew exactly what would happen if I stayed home, but heading down to the city could end in an adventure. And even if it did not, I could still at least laugh at some people, or be impressed by some people, attempting to sing.

I didn’t know when they were heading down, and Jacqui was already down there after returning from a quick trip to PA. I made some phone calls, and the ETA was at 9PM. I had twenty minutes to shower and get to the train station to make the train in time.

I jumped into the shower, deciding to go for it, and see where the night might take me. I showered quickly, and the soap burning in my eyes stayed there until I was completely clean and ready to rinse off. I threw on clothes, grabbed the video camera, and ran to the station. I am in serious need of getting back into a running routine, I made it with only seconds to spare. The train pulled up and I got on, trying not to breathe too loudly.

I sat down and was tapped on the shoulder, “Don’t you work at Captain Lawrence?” an unknown college-age student asked me.

“Yeah, I work in the tasting room on the weekend.”

Long story short, it was the guy’s birthday and he and his three friends were heading down to Manhattan to celebrate. Their plan was to go to a bar where you pay twenty bucks and get: to put on a Soviet style army uniform, put in to a glass box, and are given two minutes to take as many shots of vodka as you can out of a shot glass made out of ice while other patrons look on and cheer. I hate vodka, but it still sounded like a pretty good time.

The kids offered me a beer. We talked a while about beer, and Captain Lawrence. They apologized that all they had was domestic-macro beer. It was ice-cold and free, and they heard no complaints from me.

I like Septa, but New York’s MTA is pretty damn sweet. The trains are beautiful, clean, comfortable, spacious, and drinking alcohol out of open containers is not frowned upon, nor illegal. In fact, it’s common to see a group of young people with a cold case of beer, open, and heading south.

So after I finished the first beer, I turned to them and asked where they were putting the empties. The can was taken from me, and they offered me a second, “No I’m cool, I’m not trying to drink all your beer.” I said.

“Drink a fucking beer!” he told me.

“Well, I mean, if you’re going to twist my arm about it.”

I had a second beer, finished it, and gave them the empty can. “Jeeze, what you have funnel over there? You’re killing these beers!” I told them that I was a professional, and not to feel embarrassed. Then I realized that we had been on the train for nearly an hour. Two beers in one hour was nothing to boast about, and I decided that the guy was being sarcastic, until I noticed that no, the group was still on their second beers. Poor kids, it’s not so much that I am a professional drinker, but that they were such armatures.

Enough about the drink.

Grand Central Station is fantastic. I felt like I was reliving Carlito’s Way, Armageddon, and I Am Legend all at the same time. It was a bit of a maze finding my way out, but when I did, and looked up, the most beautiful piece of architecture in the United States was looking down on me: The Chrysler Building.

I had about a mile to make it to the Karaoke bar and walking takes forever, so I picked up the pace with a light jog, dogged a few taxis, and almost got ran over by Travis Bickle. As I ran, the Empire State Building was poking its head up for me to see.


***

The Karaoke bar is called Karaoke One 7 and is a tiny place owned and operated by a group of Asians who, one day, had the great idea: “Well, we love Karaoke, let us open a place to do that!” Unfortunately for them, the place was pretty busy and only the customers got to sing. This meant a wait staff that couldn’t find a reason to smile. That’s ok though, we still had a hell of a good time.

The men’s bathroom was strange though. The bar itself was nice, but the men’s bathroom was basically dark, lit with only a nightlight, and was covered with duct tape.

They only had one beer on draft, an Asian import, and you had to pay $2 to sing a song, but after our group finished a couple of those pitchers, we were eager to throw our money down. There may or may not be some great video from this night, but I’d need at least twenty votes of “yes” to post them. Go ahead and vote in the comments box.

These videos include: taxi drivers, Jacqui singing Cake, me singing The Pogues, and a zombie loving girl named Lindsay completely owning Lauren Hill’s Doo Wop (That thing) oh and my fat ass running for the train.

***

We left the bar around midnight, and had a nice one mile walk back to Grand Central. Jacqui and I stopped at Don’s to use the bathroom, and ended up grabbing a couple of dubs. Ain't bad.

The next train was leaving at 1:56AM, and pulled into Mount Kisco at 3AM. We were comfortably in bed and asleep by 4AM.