Comfy North City Lounge is home away from home

By Ty Hughes

Shoreline’s North City Lounge is one of those cozy, little, tucked away gems that will keep you coming back again and again. Host, Lori, is not only beautiful and quick to offer a friendly smile, she has a smooth and soothing voice behind her wireless mic. She’s only been at it for a few months now, but she has mastered the sound system and managing the crowd and rotation. Lori’s also currently spending her Friday nights hosting the show at the fabulous Goldies Shoreline Casino.

The North City Lounge has dedicated a sizable percentage of their limited floor space to karaoke and dancing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They have four karaoke monitors around the bar and several others featuring sports and other programming. Pool is a big hit at the North City too - they’ve got two tables set up in the back, plus two dart boards to play on. The horseshoe-shaped bar is situated right in the middle of the room giving Laurie, the bartender, plenty of room to service her faithful customers who saddled up to the bar on all sides. A happy, engaging crowd of all ages interacting with respect and care for one another makes the North City Lounge a fun and comfortable place to settle in for some quality relaxation.

The menu is posted above the bar. The prices are nice and the honey barbeque wings are meaty and tasty at just $3.50 per order. The bar features all the hard pops you’d want, plus a whole slew of pulltabs for your enjoyment.

Lori’s karaoke, featuring yet another quality Larry-oke Karaoke system, provides a wide variety of music for anyone’s tastes, but on this night it was primarily country music being performed. Dustin and Brian are brothers and have lived in the neighborhood for many years after moving up from the Phoenix area. They were happy to get repeated trips to the mic as the night started off a bit slow. A couple of cowboys, they each gave crowd-pleasing renditions of some of country music’s classics. Brian has a perfect voice for country music and made it all the way to the semi-finals of last year’s Evergreen Idol Contest.

Greg sang a raspy version of “Goin’ Down”, while Katie, who’s been singing karaoke since she was nine years old, sang Dixie Chicks’ “Long Time Gone” right before doing a “Love Shack” duet with Matt. Soon, the crowd was up and dancing and having a blast, laughing and partying. That’s about when the group singing began. They came up in fours and fives to gang up on various songs, getting laughs from everyone in the audience. The whole room was courteous and gracious, offering applause after every performance without fail.

The North City Lounge, located at 17554 15th Ave. NE in Shoreline, is a friendly and comfy little bar where everyone is always made to feel welcome. The karaoke is lively and loose, the atmosphere is very relaxing and the service is impeccable. Rumor has it that the very popular bartender, everybody’s favorite; Jen, is coming back real soon and most of the patrons are excited at this prospect.

Brian	Brian Again	Dancing	Dustin
Greg	Greg Again	Group	Katie
Katie Again	Lori	Lori Again	Matt & Katie