2/10/04 5:12 AM: I broke up with Boardwalk 11 tonight.

It wasn't the twitchy mike (which has been zany for going on a month now). It wasn't the distance (it's the closest karaoke place to my house, honestly). It wasn't any of a million things I chose to ignore. I don't "break up" with very many businesses, as I don't really say I've had a "relationship" with many, but me and Boardwalk are done. It's sad, too, because there's a lot that I really loved about the place. I'll start talking about the good, then talk about why such a beautiful relationship had to end.

I started going to Boardwalk 11 at the behest of a young lady named Ylana de la Rosa, a very smart and very fun lass with a penchant for Avril Lavigne and Journey songs. She and I ... had a disagreement about some things I said, involving someone she was dating. That didn't go well, but that's another story altogether.

Anyhoo, I started coming on Monday nights, which were (at the time) like a ghost town. The KJ, Mikey, was a late twenties dreamer, a sci-fi fan, a Mac user and pretty much all around my kind of scum. He was smart and witty, kept the show flowing well, and truthfully still does. Almost everything I do well as a KJ has been "sampled" from observing him.

The co-owner Steve is a personable, professional guy with an easy smile and a good personality. He's hired a number of interesting, fun staffers (the lamented Holly, the aformentioned Ylana, the photogenic Katherine) and generally been fairly cool. I've had tons of laughs with the aforementioned staff -- to the burly security guard who sings soul classics to doing "Darling Holly" more times than I can remember. Mikey has always been the central draw, the core reason for my attendance, as he's charming and fun, and makes a good karaoke evening, which I needed for a lot of last year. Altogether that made Boardwalk one of my favorite weekly haunts.

The problems are in two parts. First of all, Mikey only works Sundays and Mondays. The rest of the week is hosted by an unctuous man named Arnold. Arnold is kind of an overwhelming Asian Wayne Newton, who fires of incomprehensible streams of commentary between songs that sometimes can go as long as a minute. He regularly leaves the rooms during songs, allowing pauses of anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute worth of downtime between songs (which is particularly problematic on nights like Saturdays, which are jam packed with people and often at least two birthday parties. Arnold often announces the title of the song you will sing before you get to the stage -- he probably does that to better get the attention of whoever the singer is, in crowded rooms, but it ruins the surprise that often is accompanied by the opening chords of a zany choice.

During said party, I signed up for a disk I believed was on the premises. During the long wait for my song (numerous guests pointed out that other people sang multiple times before I did), I asked Arnold personally whether or not everything was fine with my song. He didn't look, but assured me it was. Problem is, he never looked at song numbers until it was time for the person to go up (when I host, I'm normally at least five singers ahead of whoever is on stage, as far as discs are concerned). When I was called, the disc was MIA, and I had to call an audible choosing an alternate (which disappointed a lot of people expecting "Darling Nikki," including me -- my "Oh Shiela" was less than inspired). No apology, no explanation, just his greasy smarm moving on to whatever else he had in mind.

Overall, he's a lot of what I don't want in a night of karaoke. Too much chatter, too few singers, too many songs done by the host.

The second part of the problem is more ... thorny. I said that Steve was the co-owner. The other half of that equation is a woman named Hiromi. Hiromi is in turns prickly and friendly. She's made a gift to me of photos of myself there. She's spoken kindly to me. She's gone out of her way to prepare food to fit my tastes.

On the other hand, Hiromi has her eye firmly affixed to the bottom line. Several of my karaoke-attending regular associates have stopped going to Boardwalk due to her constant -- yet indirect -- insistence on the two drink minimum. See, people who come to a place on a regular basis don't like to be sweated for, say, ten bucks. I watched this with some indifference for the most part -- it wasn't me she was hassling -- but it all started to become my problem a few weeks ago.

An extremely dear friend threw a karaoke birthday party for me at Boardwalk a few weeks ago, which brought in nearly twenty people (all of whom bought drinks) as well as the friend, who spent $100 on drink tickets (in addition to all the booze everybody grabbed). In addition to all the deep fried chicken plates I've eaten and virgin Madrases (Madri?), I figure I've personally been responsible for several hundred bucks going through that joint.

So when I'm getting ready to leave from the party, when I say goodbye to her, Hiromi says to me, "Drink more!" She's repeatedly -- since and before -- had plenipotentiaries (waitresses, and tonight the aforementioned security guard) tell me to obey the minimum. I don't like being nagged. It's why I don't deal with my mother on a regular basis. It's one of the several thousands of reasons I'm not married now. It's one of the reasons why I live alone. So nobody can tell me what to do.

It should be noted that outside the place, there's a sign that reads "$10 Cover or Two Drink Minimum." I normally walk in, order a virgin Madras and a plate of fries/deep fried chicken. This is almost always about ten bucks, more if I order the chicken. Tonight, I told the guard that. He said, "It has to be drinks. Don't order food, order drinks." Alas, the food is considerably better than the drinks, which are (in my mind) puny. But she aims at me through subordinates, pushing my buttons -- the actions of an ingrate, in my mind, after all the business I've driven there (sometimes literally). She's snappish, deceptive and passive-aggressive, and I've had far too much of that in my life already.

Going to Boardwalk becomes an anxious tightwalk -- will Hiromi bother me? Will she bug my friends? Will I be able to sing unmolested? Honestly, who needs the drama. Life is too short, and there's not another karaoke place I go to that enforces a drink minimum. Even though Ylana seems to not hate my guts anymore (we spoke civilly tonight, I tipped her -- less than I would have if I hadn't ordered an extra $4 orange and cranberry juice), even though a Mikey show is often well worth the wait, even though I like Steve and most of the servers. Even after I got over Steve asking me to remove links to his site from this one, after "some people" complained about my ill-crimes-unit worthy lambasting of some patrons (which I thought was a bit extreme, but since I like Steve, I conceded the point ... yeah, I know, rule 285 ...).

Yeah. I'm breaking up with Boardwalk. Done. I don't look back. I don't burn bridges -- I dynamite them, use sledgehammers to unseat the ground that held the bridge, and salt the earth so nothing can ever grow again. I call it The Hannibal Way. It seems best. Mondays will either find me elsewhere.