Alhambra Deaf to Sing-Along Bar’s Plea : Regulation: Council refuses to permit <i> karaoke </i> at a reputed gang hangout, though the owner says it would upgrade the clientele.

When Ed Chan bought the Midnight Owl bar last June, he wanted to spiff up the establishment on South Garfield Avenue and attract a tonier clientele.

He removed the jukebox, pool tables and dart boards and installed a karaoke machine, the high-tech sing-along equipment that is fast becoming popular among yuppies and international businessmen.

It seemed to work at first: The area’s hip Asian crowd started flocking to the bar for a chance to get up on stage and sing popular American tunes or traditional Chinese folk songs while a 27-inch video screen displayed the words and prerecorded background music blared from speakers.

Sometimes Chan himself would step up to the mike and croon “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Layla Lorren, a bartender, preferred Belinda Carlisle’s more recent hit, “Mad About You.”

“It was packed,” Lorren recalled. “It was a show by the people for the people.”

But a couple of months later, city officials told Chan that the karaoke bar was illegal: His business permit allowed only dancing and “live entertainment limited to a piano and one additional musical instrument.” It didn’t allow the video screen, sound system and laser disc player needed for a karaoke bar, Chan was told.

So, on Monday, he asked City Council members for a special license to operate karaoke equipment. However, his appeal was not exactly music to their ears. The council decided that the Midnight Owl--which city officials identified as the scene of gang activity and a recent shooting--was not the proper place for karaoke.

“I don’t think a bar of that caliber is the appropriate place,” Councilwoman Barbara Messina said before voting with three other council members to deny Chan’s request. “It’s a bar. It’s a drinking establishment.”

Councilman Michael Blanco disagreed. “I’m beside myself to understand why this is such a terrible thing, people singing to music,” he said.

Just in case the council members weren’t familiar with karaoke, which originated in Japan, Chan’s lawyer, Jerry Neuman, showed the City Council a five-minute videotape promoting the entertainment. It featured seemingly uninhibited men and women bopping on stage and singing in not-so-perfect tune, and business owners raving that karaoke had turned their businesses around.

The council was amused, but not convinced that it would work for the bar in question, a narrow, dimly lit lounge sandwiched between a typewriter shop and a vacant storefront.

They said karaoke was more suitable in a bar attached to a restaurant, such as the Square Cow Fun Bar, which offers karaoke entertainment every Sunday night in Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus Restaurant in Alhambra.

“It’s easier to retain decorum in an establishment where other activities are taking place other than karaoke, “ Councilman Talmage V. Burke said.

Black Angus doesn’t have a special karaoke permit, and neither does the Savoy Restaurant on Valley Boulevard, which has karaoke on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Scott Lee, Alhambra’s principal planner, said the city never knew those places operated karaoke bars, and plans to look into the matter.)

A disappointed Chan speculated that perhaps karaoke is “too foreign for (the City Council) to understand. . . . They got the wrong picture. This form of entertainment is cleaner.”

But Mayor Boyd G. Condie said he’s very familiar with karaoke bars; he’s been to several himself and once got up on stage and sang--although “it was mostly under duress.”

Councilman Burke said he first experienced karaoke last December, in the hillside Glendale home of Lily Chen, a former mayor of Monterey Park. Burke and his wife were attending Chen’s lavish end-of-the-year party when the hostess wheeled in a television set and a funny-looking machine.

“I didn’t even know what it was,” Burke said Tuesday. “I heard people start to sing; then I saw people standing in front of the TV set. I wondered, well, ‘Is this that new karaoke thing?’ ”