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Last night I stepped inside a parallel dimension: The Canary Hut Pub. The Burnet Road karaoke bar is almost exactly like my neighborhood cocktail bar on Metric, the Canary Roost (also a karaoke bar), except it’s… different.

The entrance has a little wall in front of the door, but when you go inside, the large, centralized bar area is right there, but instead of standing next to the stage, you’re behind all the tables watching the stage. The bar area is the same size, the stage is the same size, and the chairs and tables are exactly the same.

Typical Roost-style, there’s a pool table in the back, some crusty old people around the bar, and some kids trying to tear up the dance floor. The bartenders are pretty similar in appearance and attitude to the bartenders my Canary, but in a strange, less friendly way. And they still allow smoking unlike the Roost, which I think got in trouble.

Still, the place looked the same, but the vibe was totally different. And instead of getting shitfaced, writing “FART” on the bathroom chalkboard, heckling the singers, acquiring a posse, and hollering into the intercom about an after-party at my house, I stayed for a few songs, chatted civilly with Thomas and Trevor for a bit, and went home well before two.

This Canary Roost doppelganger was not the cause of my unusually polished weekend behavior, but was also not a good enough reason to break it. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I will have been completely sober for an entire week. That hasn’t happened in a long time, and it had been so long since I gave it enough thought to see if it could happen. But now that it’s about to, I couldn’t be more excited!