Two young Asian men, standing behind a desk protecting so much audio equipment it looked like a movie set of a NASA control room, pointed me toward a labyrinth of smoky glass adorned with the occasional large-scale photo of a scary clown or an endless field of flowers. I passed a cooler full of Heinekens and Gatorade and bottled Frappuccinos, then found my destination: a room sponge-painted forest green and upholstered in grandma floral fabric, with mirrors everywhere.
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You pick a song from a pile of binders listing about a million titles, then program in the corresponding number. It’s harder than it sounds–the digital interface is in Korean, and the remote’s buttons say simply, and puzzlingly, man, woman, up, and down.
My gift to Andrea was inviting Peter Enger to her party. He drives a cab for money, but he’s known around town as a karaoke superstar.
Karaoke changed all that. After that fateful party, he says, “I’d get home from work and I’d be like, I’m having feelings. I need therapy.” Therapy meant singing at Sidekicks. “When I was sad, I’d sing a sad song. It would always improve my mood. It was cathartic.”
One Saturday night in 2002, some producers from Jenny Jones came to Sidekicks. Enger says they interviewed several regulars, but they focused on him, a newcomer. “I knew they were gonna want me. I just knew. I’d never even seen the show.” He became the main subject on an episode about quirky passions ruining personal relationships–he convinced his daughter, who was 28 at the time, to pretend to be embarrassed by him.
