The wonderfully weird Kostume Karaoke has relocated from Columbia Heights to Solly's U Street Tavern. Bring your own costume or wear one of the gently-used outfits provided.

-- Fritz Hahn (Jan. 7, 2008)

More about Kostume Karaoke:

Wonderland's Karaoke Stars Dress for Success
By Fritz Hahn
Washington Post Weekend Section
Friday, March 9, 2007

Every Sunday night is karaoke night at the Wonderland Ballroom in Columbia Heights, and it's like no other singalong party in the city. There are thousands of songs, with all the usual suspects, and performers range from the fun (a polished duet of "Girl You Know It's True") to the truly awful. So far, so good.

Except the young woman who's belting out Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" is wearing a child's hooded Winnie the Pooh costume, complete with little yellow ears. It's the kind of costume you might take your elementary schooler trick-or-treating in. When Slash's epic guitar solo comes around, she begins miming away on an inflatable Flying V guitar. A little later, another 20-something woman takes the stage wearing an old wedding dress and pink fright wig to perform a decent version of -- what else? -- "Like a Virgin."

This, my friends, isn't just karaoke: It's Kostume Karaoke.

Soon-to-be performers are rummaging around what looks like a jumble sale at the front of the room, taking clothing off hooks on the wall and poking through piles of hats, wigs and toys on tables next to the stage: tiaras, a Santa beard and, for that special version of "Living in America," a three-piece red-white-and-blue Uncle Sam outfit, complete with bow tie and a towering striped top hat.

Before the night is over, a guy in flowing golden robes and a pointy, star-and-moon-covered wizard's hat announces he wants to "teach us about Jimi [Hendrix]" before launching into a passable "Crosstown Traffic"; the Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" is delivered by a woman in a tutu and rubber anime wig with pink pigtails; a man in a pith helmet belts out Morrissey; and warblers of both sexes have jazzed up their outfits with a glittering gold fedora. "La Bamba" is handled by guys wearing an enormous sombrero and a hat shaped like a giant red chili pepper. Even the performers are laughing while they sing.

Host, DJ and prop mistress Debbi Arseneaux says she has been on the Washington karaoke scene for about six years, mostly going to such places as 1409 Playbill Cafe. "Last year, I just decided I wanted my own night," she explains, but she figured she'd like to run one that was more interesting than the usual. Inspired by a karaoke-with-costumes night that she visited in San Francisco, she approached the Wonderland Ballroom in October about hosting Kostume Karaoke.

"To me, it's more interactive than your usual karaoke night," she says, adding that she thinks the costumes make it easier for folks who are reticent to get onstage in front of a crowd.

"You can hide," she says. "You can get up and put on a wig and a hat. For people who are not usually performers, you can get outside yourself and be silly without pressure. It's fun to watch your friends get up there and look silly. It takes the edge off."

Dressing up seems like the logical extension of karaoke night since, after all, it's really nothing more than grown-ups playing pretend for four minutes at a time ("You, too, can be a star! You can sing like Madonna!") and the better karaoke entertainers -- the ones who, unlike most of us, can actually sing, or sound like they've practiced their songs in advance -- have always had a theatrical element to them.

Performing is in Arseneaux's blood. As a freelance theater artist, she has worked as a director, stage manager and instructor for a number of area companies, including the Rorschach Theatre, the Theater Alliance and Imagination Stage. So when it came time to assemble the thrift store's worth of wigs, beards and hats, Arseneaux just had to rummage around in her closet, which is where she found the Pooh costume. "I taught theater to young children at a summer camp once, and I needed a kid to be Winnie the Pooh," she laughs. "Everyone who's got a small head can wear it. And everybody loves Pooh!

"There's a lot of props, and the costumes are all easy to put on and take off. Every few weeks I'll get something new when I'm out prop shopping and think, 'Wow, that'd be great for karaoke.' " Even with such a great gimmick, a karaoke night is going to rise or fall on the strength of its songbook. The list contains about 8,000 songs and runs 74 pages. Fans of Nelly, Connie Francis, Carrie Underwood, Bobby Brown, Dokken, Frank Sinatra, Kiss, Baby Shambles and Hank Williams will find something to their liking. You can even sing Rick Dees's "Disco Duck" if you want, though Arseneaux's collection is particularly strong on '80s tunes and indie rock. There's a page of TV theme songs from such shows as "Saved by the Bell," "The Jeffersons," "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Hong Kong Phooey," if you can remember the melody to that one. Arseneaux tries to be as wide-ranging as possible, particularly given Wonderland's Miller High Life-and-PBR-loving hipster vibe. "Even people who aren't excited about karaoke say, 'I can't believe you have this Smiths song!' "

It's not just for watching, either; a group of girls rushes the makeshift dance floor in front of the stage as Arseneaux bursts into the theme from "Fame," and a friend grabs one of the guitars to perform the squealing solo. ("I'm a big '80s rock chick," Arseneaux says later, adding that "Love Is a Battlefield" and the theme from "Flashdance" are her signature tunes, though she doesn't mind if anyone else wants to sign up for them.) The later it gets and the drunker the crowd becomes, the more the props begin to find their way off the tables and into the crowd, which limits the choices for the performers, though you can always ask someone if you can borrow the construction helmet or the broadsword if you're up next. Arseneaux doesn't mind customers wearing the hats once they're done onstage -- "people are good about bringing them back" -- but says spillage is the real worry. "The problem, once it gets crowded, is people putting their beers down on the tables and knocking them over. But I do clean the costumes regularly."

All the singers I've seen are wearing pieces from Arseneaux's collection, but she wants to encourage people to bring items themselves and sets an example by wearing her own. "There are people who don't recognize me without a wig on," she says.