Musical Comedy

TOO SHY, SHY: A private karaoke room in Chinatown lets you serenade your friends instead of a room full of strangers. Photo By: Mike Mergen

The basement of a Chinatown restaurant offers patrons a place to safely live out their karaoke fantasies.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

On a recent late Saturday night, bolstered with the confidence that only a private room in the basement of a Chinatown restaurant can provide, I sang karaoke to my heart's content, my voice echoing unsteadily through Kmart-bought speakers. Armed with two wireless microphones, four friends and I crowded into a wood-paneled room to sing mostly '80s tunes to repeated images of the Hong Kong Harbor, London's Trafalgar Square and Shanghai's Oriental Pearl tower.

Due to open this month, the North Sea Seafood Restaurant turned its downstairs storage area into a karaoke bar with a single room that can be rented out for $25 an hour to hold private karaoke parties. It was the idea of Alice Lee, the 23-year-old daughter of the restaurant's owner, her older brother, Norman, and Alice's boyfriend to renovate the roomy basement and call it Downstairs @ North Sea. After adding large televisions, red paint, IKEA lights and footstools, custom-built foam benches and a donated cash register and stools from her father's friends, the basement became an entertainment haven for a minimal cost.

The atmosphere is cozy with a false sense of privacy. Though the walls shield singers from the sight of other bar patrons, the sounds emitted from the karaoke room carry throughout the entire bar. I found this out when I stepped out of the room to use the bathroom and shuddered upon hearing my friend's vocals, each lyrical phrase distinguishable, though distinctly off-key, from the far side of the bar. The patrons didn't mind and seemed to have mastered the zen of ignoring the melodious grunts uttered from an unseen cave. Occasionally, Lee herself will bounce in, sing a little and see if anyone wants a drink. It's clear that she wants everyone to have a good time, and it's in the interest of her business that everyone does so.

Since the age of 13, Lee's been making her own money. She started off working alongside her mother in a Chinatown sweatshop, sewing miniscule tags in clothing. By 16, she was selling cell phones and accessories out of the back of her father's trunk, and when she got to Drexel -- majoring in finance, of course -- she was running her business out of her book bag. Lee also holds down a full-time day job at an investment firm while she runs Downstairs in the evenings. The money she and her brother earn from the karaoke place pays for their youngest sister's college education.

The scheme for a new karaoke bar was inspired by Lee's own pastime, hanging out with her friends at another karaoke joint in Olney. Lee says the only other karaoke bar in Chinatown was closed a while back and she recognized a market opportunity. "A place for all [your] friends to hang out with you. And you're making money," she thought, and a brilliant business idea was born.

The name karaoke is rooted in two Japanese words abbreviated and then combined. "Kara" is derived from "karappo," which means empty, and "oke" derived from "okesutura," the transliteration of "orchestra." It's funny to think of karaoke as an "empty orchestra," but some rooms may want to empty as wannabe singers screech out unsteady choruses.

At Lee's place, the karaoke book, stuffed with sheets of song titles in plastic sleeves in a nicotine-smelling gray binder, offers choices mostly from years past, including, inexplicably, four versions of "Oops!'I Did it Again" by Britney Spears. Abba, Bob Marley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson are other popular favorites. Besides English, you can sing in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Spanish. Lee is the first to admit her place is a low-budget operation, not like the karaoke rooms you find in Hong Kong, where you can sing the latest hits and Justin Timberlake will appear when his song is selected. You'll find no pop stars staring at you -- the videos are mostly of scenery with words streaming along the bottom of the screen. Customers can order food from North Sea's kitchen to be brought down to the karaoke bar, a novel concept in Chinatown eating.

Downstairs @ North Sea provides a smoky, dark atmosphere, not hip or glam, but this is precisely why it's not intimidating. Walking in from the sidewalks of Chinatown and through two separate doors may unnerve you, but Lee or Jeffrey the bartender will be the first to yell out from the cluster of people to greet friends and strangers alike. So if you're not brave enough to bellow in front of a bar full of strangers, search out the private karaoke room in Chinatown with your closest friends and sing into the wee hours of the night.

Downstairs @ North Sea, 155 N. 10th St., 215-928-1828. Open every day, 8 p.m.-2 a.m.