If you are looking for karaoke in Miami and you would rather not shout over a television, the short answer is Wednesday. Every Wednesday at The Library the bookcase swings open at six, and at nine the microphone comes out. The room is candlelit, the year on the walls is somewhere around 1925, and it sits on the Coral Way corridor about two minutes from FIU.
That is the practical version. The longer answer is about what kind of karaoke night you actually want.
What a Karaoke Bar in Miami Usually Means
People searching for the best karaoke bar in Miami tend to want one of two things. Either a private room where nobody outside your group hears the damage, or a proper room with an audience, where singing in front of strangers is the entire point. Both are good nights. They are just not the same night.
Ours is the second kind, with one difference. This is not a stage bolted into the corner of a sports bar. It is a speakeasy, with brass, worn leather, candlelight, and a bar built on the classics, and on Wednesdays the songbook happens to be open. You can sing, or you can take a table with a drink and watch someone braver than you sing, and both are a perfectly reasonable way to spend an evening.
There is also the small pleasure of the setting. The whole room is a library, which makes Wednesday the one night of the week you are allowed to be loud in one.
Karaoke Near FIU: The Details Worth Knowing
The Library is at 10766 SW 24th St, Miami, FL 33165, minutes from Florida International University, which makes it a straightforward karaoke bar near FIU for anyone coming from Coral Way, Sweetwater, Kendall, Doral or Tamiami without wanting to drive across town first.
- When: Karaoke every Wednesday. Doors at 6 PM, the microphone at 9 PM. The room itself is open Wednesday through Saturday, 6 PM to 1 AM.
- Who: The Library is 21 and over, so bring identification.
- What to wear: Cocktail attire. You do not need a costume, just the outfit you would put on for a night you had been looking forward to.
- Parking: Free parking in the plaza lot directly in front of the building, and street parking along SW 24th St.
- Seats: Seatings run every half hour and each window holds a handful of people. Walk-ins are welcome, and a reservation simply guarantees your seats. If there are more than four of you, email the team and we will sort it out.
Finding the door is part of the evening. From the street we look like a quiet old book-binding shop, and the way in runs through specialTEA Lounge, where a bookcase is doing a very good job of not looking like a door. Take your time and look closely. Directions and parking live here if it is your first visit.
What to Drink Between Songs
Karaoke night does not change the bar, it only changes the volume. The list is built on the canon, prohibition-era recipes made with modern technique, whiskey forward, across sixteen taps. The Old Fashioned is the house staple and still the drink we judge ourselves by: bourbon or rye, sugar, bitters, an expressed orange peel, and nothing to hide behind.
Ask the bar for a classic and you are in good hands. If you like knowing what you are ordering before you walk in, we wrote a longer piece on the art of the Old Fashioned, and live jazz fills the other nights of the week when the songbook is closed.
Making a Wednesday of It
The nights that work best tend to start early. Come at six, take a table while the room is still quiet, order something slowly, and let the place fill up around you. By nine you have a seat, a drink you like, and no particular reason to be nervous about the microphone.
Wednesdays do fill up, so the easiest thing is to reserve a time. Pick the night and the half hour closest to when you will walk in, and your phone number becomes your library card number, which is what scans you through the street door. You can read the rest of how karaoke night runs, or take the long way round through the room behind the bookcase first. The microphone comes out at nine either way.
Come sing. Keep the address to yourself.