Pilars in Winter Garden offers karaoke and home

“In a nutshell, every Thursday is different,” Lori Defuso tells me.

The New York transplant to Winter Garden has just left the stage after an ensemble rendition of George Gershwin’s “Summertime.”

“Do we get some of the same songs? Yes. But overall, you never know what you’re going to get.”

Defuso is the third or fourth person to tell me I’ve come to Pilars on a slow night, even though to me the Winter Garden bar next door to the Garden Theatre seems boisterous for a Thursday. The space feels open yet intimate, and though the decorating is modern, I feel as if I walked into something I thought had ended before I was born: a proper lounge.

This is Pilar’s karaoke night, where singers are accompanied by a piano player. The bar serves creative craft cocktails and has a small but satisfying food menu, but Defuso says that’s not why people are here. “More than the cocktails,” she says, sipping her own something in a martini glass, “it’s the atmosphere.” COMMENTARY

That atmosphere starts with karaoke host Billy Flanagan, a Disney cast member for 35 years and, according to him, the longest serving contracted entertainer in the park. His voice welcomes everyone with the charm of a classic lounge singer and cheekbones beyond your wildest dreams. “My motto is, come in strangers, walk out friends,” Flanagan says.

And he’s made that happen. Kriss Ridgeway, who played Ariel at MGM Studios original “Voyage of the Little Mermaid” attraction, met her best friend here. “I love how open everybody is,” she says. “Everyone knows your name.”

Flanagan will even be officiating a wedding soon of a couple who first met here.

Becky Roper, founding president of the Garden Theatre, opened Pilars five years ago. “We needed a late-night place,” she says of the revitalized downtown about 20 miles west of Orlando. She wanted something to include all the talent she saw in her town. “It’s a natural extension of what’s going on next door.”

Longtime resident and former art teacher Rod Reeves can’t say enough about the community of talent that comes out to this night. “There’s such a wonderful mixture of people,” he says, and launches into stories of performers from “The Lion King” and “The Phantom of the Opera” and a woman who had her wake here.

The next karaoke night is Wednesday, then Pilars returns to its regular 8 p.m. Thursday schedule. But whenever you make it, you’re likely to wind up like Defuso, looking around and saying, “I’m home.”