Unemployed At The Karaoke Brothel

Alright, I know it's a terrible title but I just couldn't help myself and before anybody comes up with a smart arse comment: no, I never have been nor will I ever go to a brothel. This is going to be a long one but just humour me for five minutes. Let me explain...

It was my last day working on the mountain on Thursday (that explains the "unemployed" thing). A bunch of us went to the bar at work for a few pints. I haven't really been out for drinks with the guys from work so it was good to catch up in a social environment. Naturally as the evening rolled on the guys wanted to head out. It was suggested that we go to a karaoke bar in North Vancouver. I knew the place that was being talked about and was all for it.

Stupidly six of us piled into this guys car, it was very cramped but fortunately I had called shotgun and avoided the crush. However the driver had been wearing his snowboard boots to work and had to take them off (it's bloody hard to drive with snowboard boots on). Due to the lack of room in the car I had this guys boots sitting right next to my head. Let me tell you the odour coming from these boots redefined the meaning of horrific. We had all of the windows down in the car but as soon as the car stopped moving it would immediately fill with the pungent stench of funky feet. I almost threw up, and it wasn't because of the beer.

Eventually we made it to the karaoke bar. This place is in my neighbourhood and it was on my to do list. I thought it was an actual bar, you know, serving drinks and everybody sitting around having a laugh while people get up and sing. Wrong. We walked in and all we saw was a dude at a desk, two long corridors with many doors leading god-knows-where.

I swear it could easily pass for what I imagine a brothel would look like. It was pretty easy to picture Chow-Yun Fat making his way through the corridors with a shotgun, kicking in doors as he looked for the heroin-dealing, gun-smuggling pimp-villain only to reveal some weird sex scenario every time he peered into a room.

The five of us must have scared the hell out of the poor Japanese fella sitting at the desk. Upon seeing the place all five of us immediately asked "where's the bloody bar?", "don't you sell beer here?" and so on. We eventually figured out that you actually rent out a small room that has a few couches and a karaoke machine with some groovy disco lighting in it. You could tell that this was a place meant for your serious karaoke punter, no drunken white-boy renditions of "Sweet Child O' Mine" here. Once we entered the room this is where things just started getting too weird for me.

The karaoke machine was pretty impressive, all shiny and futuristic looking with a big screen TV attached. The room was dark and things were getting a bit blurry so I couldn't tell you much more. The guys were using a remote control to choose songs. The problem was that the prompts appearing on screen were in Japanese and the tunes were nothing that I could remotely recognise. However the video clips accompanying the songs were fascinating . It looked like somebody had shot a 10 hour long Japanese love story and crammed it into the karaoke machine.
I think the same video kept playing and the subtitles just changed, or for all I know we could have just been repeating the same song over and over again.

Instead of trying to figure out how to get English subtitles on screen the guys decided to freestyle rap. It was amusing for a few minutes but it did not take long for it to start getting annoying. The bloke who worked there came in and changed the subtitles to English and suddenly I recognised the lyrics appearing on screen. It was Slipknots "Wait And Bleed", naturally I snatched the mic out of somebodies hand and put my Nathan Explosion death metal voice on.

I couldn't keep up as the words were just rolling across screen too quickly, and it was just disturbing seeing the video clip show a young couple holding hands and strolling through a park to this sort of song. To top it off the disco lights were inducing what I imagine was vertigo. Things had started to go bad and I had to leave this strange place.

We left the karaoke brothel and the guys were pumped for more karaoke at a proper "bar". I wanted none of this and just had to get home to bed. It wasn't that I was too drunk, I think it was just the utter weirdness of the place I had just left.

Well that's my karaoke brothel adventure, it took a little bit longer to type up than I imagined but this story had to be told. I've finished work, Mel finishes up tomorrow. We'll be doing a few things in the last week that we're in Vancouver such as spending a day out at Whistler. Then it's off to Lake Louise, Calgary and the UK. Can't wait.

Take it easy y'all!