Why Jesus Would Dig Karaoke Bars

            I’ve always had this dream that I would find a place and love it and it would love me back. Last summer I stumbled upon my place, almost by accident, a hidden gem in a rotting shopping center across the street from the house we had just moved into on Tulip Road. The bar is called Ye Old Village Inn Pub and Eatery. This place, this pub, continues to exceed my hopes of being known and loved and it’s mine every Friday night.

            On Fridays at The Village, they have karaoke. After a long week at work in an office, there’s nothing I like more than a liberating walk across the street for a glass of wine ($4) or a PBR ($2), and a night of song and dance with others in my ‘hood. The karaoke is run by a guy who refers to himself as Rocky the Italian Stallion (imagine a bald head, Aviators, butt tight jeans and some kind of sparkly bedazzled t-shirt on a man giving all he’s got to making love to the microphone stand, and you’ve got it). 

            The bartenders are always the same, and they often forget to add drinks to our tab. They know what we like and we tip them well. I am told there is a chalkboard in the men’s restroom (someone actually took a photo of it on my birthday last summer) and a couple of weeks ago, it was reported that someone had written “Rocky likes cock.”

            There is a lot to love about the place, but I live for the regulars. There are many middle agers, but Bellingham is a college town, so you’ve got youngsters too. It’s a rare blend of the two. You’ve got Justin who constantly goes outside to smoke pot and usually sings angry songs by Disturbed, but one time, for whatever reason, he belted out Seal’s Kiss from a Rose. There’s the loud guy who always wears a Warren Moon jersey, there’s the chick who sings that one country song and nails it every time, there’s this guy named JB who works at the liquor store down the road and, one night, sang the most beautiful rendition of Dock on the Bay that I’ve ever heard, a guy who sings Elton John ballads and looks an awful lot like Zach Galifianakis, and, our favorite, Papa James, a big guy with a greasy ponytail, who got up on stage in sweatpants and a windbreaker one night and absolutely stunned us all by how much he sounded like Cat Stevens.

            The regulars in this bar gladly accept each other’s song and openly respond to the music. There is no judgment. It isn’t rare to witness dance parties break out between the tables. It isn’t rare to witness the old and the young twirling each other or forming a long human train around the bar. The regulars applaud and whoop and scream and encourage the singer at the microphone, and always make a huge to-do about the performance at the end of each song, whether it happens to be Papa James singing or someone who totally stinks. I can’t help but think that Jesus might dig this scene, these strangers loving each other so willingly, and that heaven might be something like this karaoke bar, a collection of tired misfits at the end of the week, singing and dancing with all our might.