Karaoke has come a long way from its murky 1960s origins in Japan, where musician Daisuke Inoue rigged up a coin-operated machine called the Juke 8 so his salaryman fans could sing without him. Nearly 60 years later, New York City has turned the format into an art form, with 30-plus dedicated bars and hundreds of sing-along nights tracked by sites like Karaoke Crowd. A recent week-long crawl across all five boroughs showed just how many shapes a karaoke night can take.

The logical starting point is Manhattan's Koreatown, where a single stretch of West 32nd Street packs in a dozen or so venues stacked above street level. Gagopa draws big groups and Midtown office parties with its BYOB policy, sister bar 32 Karaoke papered its walls with Polaroids of past singers, and Chorus Karaoke Lounge goes clubbier with private rooms lined with portraits of Madonna and Elvis. Pro tip: decoding the elevator buttons is harder than hitting the high notes. Two nights later, Sid Gold's Request Room near Chelsea offers a quieter alternative — a cocktail bar with a Baldwin baby grand behind velvet curtains, where resident pianist Mark Benjamin accompanies singers, harmonizes on songs he's never heard, and gently forces reluctant wallflowers onto the stage.

Over in Queens, the year-old Barkada Social Club in Astoria doubles as a Filipino restaurant, and when a '90s Tagalog ballad like Jesse Zaragoza's "Bakit Pa" starts, eating stops and everyone sings. The venue hosts a monthly queer-friendly karaoke event with the Barkada NYC community group, and the crowd — lumpia on the tables, Bruno Mars on the speakers — feels more like a family reunion than a bar night.

Staten Island's Steiny's Pub, an eight-minute walk from the Staten Island Ferry, is a former gay bar turned sports dive where an emcee named Nazz Raidience runs a loose queue, a prize wheel dispenses free drinks or push-up penalties, and ferry workers reportedly arrive singing around 2 a.m. Locals handle everything from Kittie death growls to Eminem with breakdancing. Friday nights head to the Bronx, where Bronx Beer Hall hides inside the Arthur Avenue food hall in the old Italian neighborhood — follow the music down the hallway after the surrounding shops close, and expect everything from Bad Bunny to Air Supply.

The appeal is simple: it's one of the few remaining nights out where strangers willingly wait half an hour to embarrass themselves in public, together. Whether you want a private room, a piano man, a plate of lumpia, or a dive-bar prize wheel, there's a mic waiting somewhere in the city on any given night.