Marti McKenna

I didn’t realize how special SBK is for underage karaoke lovers until a underage customer told me, ″Thank you for being no age limit.″

We have refused to be a karaoke bar for reasons. One reason is that SBK is for everyone, from a baby to a grand parent. As the number of underage karaoke singers has increased, this reason has become more important than it used to be.

We’re proud to be no age limit.

If you need drinks when you do karaoke, please get a banquet permit and bring your favorite drinks to SBK. Bring your kids, too.

You don’t really need to make your reservation a few weeks ahead, but it is wise to contact us a few days before the day you plan to visit SBK. Just send us some information about your party from here. Then we’ll call you to finalize your reservation.

It doesn’t cost you anything to make a reservation. We’ll ask your credit card number and charge you $30.00 cancelling fee only if you cancel your reservation after seven days prior to your reservation date.

If you come up an idea of doing some karaoke with your friends on a Friday or Saturday night, please call us at 206-343-6599 before you come to SBK if you don’t have a reservation.

For Sunday through Thursday, on the other hand, you can usually walk in. However, please call us if you want to be sure to get a karaoke room.

So my car’s windows were all the way down when I crossed the I-90 bridge this afternoon. The wind felt good like in May.

I think we didn’t hit 60 until May last year. Let’s enjoy the sun while we can. They say the weather will go back to dark and wet by Wednesday.

A simple answer is nowhere because there is no love or hope in many African American communities, which are more isolated after desegregation. I’m not going to summarize it pretending to be a wise man. I just recommend it.

However, I can’t help but quote the following.

It was a time when, as a friend of mine said, “Being black was the bidness!” We celebrated our kinky hair and dark skin and greeted each other as “brother” and “sister” without any sense of irony. Everybody seemed to have a copy of Jet or Ebony magazine on their coffee tables; a man would have been slapped if he called a black woman a bitch.

Then it all seemed to evaporate. Crack cocaine decimated black communities in the 1980s. The blue-collar jobs that gave many black families a foothold in the middle class began to disappear. Desegregation split the black community. Those with money and education moved to the suburbs. The ones left behind became more isolated.

Today, we have a black first family, but our own families are collapsing. A 2009 study from the Institute for American Values and the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting at Hampton University in Virginia highlights the erosion.

The study found that while 70.3% of all black adults were married in 1970, that rate dropped to 39.6% by 2008. The study also showed that while 37.6% of black births were to unmarried parents in 1970, that figure soared to 71.6% by 2008.

Our music became as grim as those statistics. Singing about love now seems outdated.

Blake, who is an African American, was enlightened partly by listening to R&B music when it was full of love and hope. Earth Wind & Fire’s songs helped him gain his self-confidence when he almost lost it after his first year of college buying into the idea that being smart is a ″white thing.″ Well, the music only could not save him or anyone. He writes, ″I was proud to belong to a people who could create such exquisite, hopeful and exuberant music. Maybe, I thought, I could create something worthwhile myself one day.″ He graduated with honors.

Love can change a person, people and society positively. He explores the old and current R&B music industry looking for the love.

Where is the love?

If you want to know one answer, read this article.

I want you to look at this video first, or watch the entire clip if you have time. It shows the world fastest car crash test. The UK’s Channel 5′s Fifth Gear program crashed Ford Focus into a concrete wall at 120 mph.

The car was instantaneously reduced to less than half of the original size. Of course, the cabin space disappeared. If you had been on the car, you would have been completely flattened before you feel anything.

When I watched this video first, I couldn’t believe the car was going only at 120 mph. It seemed to me the crash happened at 200 mph or so although I knew Ford Focus can’t go that fast. The impact was astonishing. You will never survive it it. It is obvious that Ford Focus, or probably any normal passenger cars you can buy, is not made for a 120 mph crash. Remember, however, cars that most of you drive probably go easily faster than 120 mph.

As a life-long avid racing fan, I have seen numerous racing accidents. Those who drive in Formula One, Indycar, Le Mans and NASCAR normally walk off of a 120 mph crash.

Those racing cars are designed to save the driver’s life when they crash at 200 mph or faster because those cars are capable of doing 200 mph or faster.

Then why don’t we demand cars that save our life in a 120 mph crash? Those cars we drive are capable of going over 120 mph. We should be able to survive crashes that our cars are capable of creating. In such a car, you will easily survive when your car is hit by a drunken driver’s car at 60 mph.

Technologies necessary to produce such cars have been available as evident in cars in the major racing series. Car manufacturers will surely say it’s too expensive to produce those ultra safe cars. I don’t think so. Once one car maker start selling those cars at an affordable price, few will buy dangerous cars from other manufacturers.

Going back to the crash video, it is very clear that the most impact shock absorbing part of the car is the passenger cabin! What is this car designed to protect? Your grocery bags? Or golf bags?

Any car must be designed to protect the space that driver and passengers occupy. Isn’t it obvious? Apparently it is not for car manufacturers.

We must be strapped in a shell that is virtually indestructible at a 120 mph crash. Everything outside the shell must be able to absorb the impact by collapsing at an impact. Isn’t it simple?

Once these ultra safe cars are out there, we will have a hard time finding any reasons why we drive such dangerous cars now. I hope the ultra safe cars appear soon, but I know also they won’t be produced unless we demand them, or unless a Steve Jobs of the auto industry becomes CEO of a car maker.

Let’s demand ultra safe cars.

P.S.

There is another reason why I’m writing this. A few days ago, I was driving on I-5 N near Northgate in Seattle in the afternoon. I was doing about 65 mph as other cars around me. Then a BMV passed me on my left at twice as fast as I was going. I didn’t hear the car was approaching me. It was just a flash. As soon as it passed me, it turned right going through without braking between me and the car in front of me. The car made a similar move twice to exit to Northgate Mall and went through the red light.

I happened so fast. Perhaps most drivers around me didn’t even notice it. The car was probably going above 130 mph weaving through traffic without braking. If I saw those moves on a racing track, I would applaud.

I couldn’t believe the way the driver appeared to trust other drivers around him or her. If a driver around him or her had braked or turned the steering wheel, the driver of the BMW could have easily hit the car and become a passenger who was unable to control the car at all. Then the BMW could have hit a concrete wall at 130 mph.

We now know what would have happened to the car and driver. Was the driver drunken? Or just insane?

To make things worse, I could have hit the BMW or other car if the BMW lost the control. Then I could have hit something at 60 mph. This kind of stuff happens very often as long as we allow many people to drink and drive.

I just wish I would be in an ultra safe car when it happens to me.

I’m used to feel the heavy drum and base beat of Western pop music here at SBK. I can’t really hear what they are singing because I’m outside the room, but I can hear exotic rhythms and scales mixed with American sound coming from other rooms.

Normally, I block all the sound coming out of the karaoke rooms because I’d be very tired otherwise at the end of a night. Tonight I don’t mind its coming into my ears.

Indian karaoke singers are welcome at SBK. You can sing Indian songs from “the world largest collection of Indian Karaoke Music” through Meragana.com. You need your own membership for the web site, which is only $4.95 a month.

We have private karaoke rooms and portable karaoke systems to deliver. We have had only two ways to offer karaoke to you: inviting you to our karaoke rooms and delivering our karaoke systems to your locations. We haven’t helped you enough to enjoy karaoke.

We’d like to offer you more ways of enjoying karaoke or incorporating karaoke in your special events.

So far, you have had to bring your own food and drinks to our karaoke rooms. That’s fine for some occasions and is very economical. But what if you can just order food and drinks for your party at our karaoke rooms through great catering services around Seattle? You could save a lot of your time in planning your party. You are assured you’ll get great food and drinks.

We have delivered our karaoke systems to many great venues, which our customers had picked. We’d like to offer you a variety of packages combining great venues, catering, our karaoke systems and other services. So you don’t have to think too much about your next party.

Come to SBK with your babies or young children. Your baby might become like Lady Gaga because of the early musical education at SBK.

Come to SBK. We don’t have age limit. Because we just have private karaoke rooms, kids don’t have to mixed with drunken grownups.

If they want to enjoy karaoke during the daytime, contact us. We’ll open our door for them with a prepayment.

In fact, a seventeen-year-old birthday girl had a great time with her friends at SBK this evening.