Wang Chung's Karaoke Bar, Honolulu

About Wang Chung's Karaoke Bar

Wang Chung's is a small gay karaoke bar tucked inside the Stay Hotel on Koa Avenue, named for the '80s song and built almost entirely on the personality of owner Danny Chang. A Vietnamese-American who moved to Honolulu in 2007, Chang started in a roughly 300-square-foot space and crowdfunded his way to this larger room when the original building was slated for demolition, a backstory the regulars all seem to know. His heritage runs through the kitchen, from chicken 'wangs' and fried rice to the signature Ho-Chi-tini, a vodka-and-pandan house cocktail. Karaoke runs nightly into the early hours on a standard queue, and the Sunday drag brunch pairs performances with bottomless mimosas. The room is genuinely small, which is the charm: the crowd mixes LGBTQ+ regulars with Waikiki tourists, and the close quarters mean you tend to leave having met people whether or not that was the plan.