The topic for Austin Blog Day is “What to do with four spare hours in Austin”.

Let’s start with what I did with four spare hours in Austin — got this site up and running. And if you have a few hours to spare and want to start a blog, that would be a good thing to do. Then next time there’s an Austin blog day you can post your own info instead of just living vicariously through others while you sit at home in tighty whities, eating cheese balls and chocolate-covered plums and talking in haiku.

Now what do you think I can no longer do with four spare hours in Austin? If you said sing karaoke downtown on weekends, you were right. As of last week, Bob Popular Karaoke (aka Crocodile Rocks) is shut, after being sold. Apparently it’s going to become yet another vanilla-flavored bar, like there are not enough of those. It looks like my karaoke consumption for the foreseeable future will have to come from the one- or two-night a week places that are so hit and miss.

Chip Rosenthal lamented that live music downtown has been replaced with drunken bush sisters and a cheap jello shots party scene. My thinking is more along the lines of: if there happens to be a cheap jello shots party scene with drunken coeds, it can at least feature one decent karaoke bar. It may not technically qualify as “live music”, but it is music and it is live. Karaoke is direct democracy; a musician on a stage is a dictatorship.

I’ve spent a good chunk of my friday and game slot penghasil uang langsung ke rekening night time over the past four years at BPK and am going to miss it. The place wasn’t the most excellent karaoke bar I’ve been to, but it was the most excellent one in Austin. The KJ’s were really friendly, loved what they did, and were good at their jobs. The drinks were cheap and the bartenders knew what their customers liked. If it wasn’t for the fact that the management of BP did not understand or properly promote karaoke (including barely adding to the song list in 4 years), it could have been a really great place.

What amazes me is that more places downtown don’t feature karaoke. There is occasional karaoke at ocean’s eleven and club deville, but I’ll go on record as saying that downtown is way ready for a well-done, full-time karaoke bar. Karaoke is not a passing fad, it’s a hugely popular, growing worldwide phenomenon and it’s here to stay.

While the folks at Common Interest wouldn’t probably be too psyched if a kickass karaoke bar opened downtown, anyone contemplating opening one should stop by CI any day of the week. There aren’t too many bars that are packed every single day. This is a town that likes to sing, and we have a huge shortage of places to do it in.

I’m looking forward to checking out the thursday night karaoke at Sake on Sixth once the warm weather picks up and they start doing it again. Apparently the KJ has like 10,000 songs on his list, which is pretty rare in this town.

What to do if you have four spare hours in Austin on Monday (2/24): go see “Karaoke Fever” at the Drafthouse Downtown, followed by “The Backyard”.