Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” is one of the biggest hits of the summer. The track debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 just below Taylor Swift. There are viral TikTok dances to the song. And it’s catapulted the Woodbridge, Virginia, native into the international spotlight. Locals might have noticed something fun in the song’s lyrics: He name-drops a Woodbridge karaoke bar called Queen’s Gambit. The spot also shows up briefly in the song’s video. So what has that meant for the bar?
When I stopped by recently, Queen’s Gambit, located in a Tudor-style banquet hall, still had Christmas decorations up in July. A life-sized sculpture of an elephant’s head sits on a mantel, and Native American headdresses hang from the walls. Most of the art, though, is framed puzzles and kitschy signs that say things like “old guys rule.”
Glenn Ramirez, a gregarious 68-year-old, opened Queen’s Gambit 24 years ago—the same year Richman was born. The sixth of 12 children, Ramirez was the entertainer of the family and owned a karaoke bar in the Philippines before moving to the US, where he spent more than a decade working at McDonald’s and Boston Market before opening his own place. Though it initially started out as a restaurant, today it’s a karaoke dive with no website and a side room where people smoke and play darts.
While most of the clientele are in their thirties or older, Richman was among a younger group who’d occasionally perform rap songs. Ramirez didn’t know Richman by name or learn about his song until some of his regulars started mentioning it this spring. Ramirez also had no idea that when Richman came by the bar this spring, he was filming the karaoke session for later use in his official music video. “They just popped in and they were having fun and that was it,” he says. One barback told me he originally thought Richman was a football star because he came in with a leather jacket and an entourage.
On a recent Saturday night, karaoke kicked off with “The Lady Is a Tramp” by Frank Sinatra and “Living in America” by James Brown. Richman’s song isn’t a popular karaoke request: “I think one person did it that I’ve heard about,” said Paula Nichols, a Manassas school bus driver who’s a regular and occasional KJ. “It was like a flash in the pan kind of thing. ‘Oh, did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear?’ And then people haven’t talked about it since he was there [filming in the spring].”
The business hasn’t seen a noticeable bump from the song, though Ramirez’s son Paolo, the head bartender, says “there’s some new faces.” (“Million Dollar Baby” isn’t Queen’s Gambit’s first brush with fame; The bar also appears in a B-list horror film called Carver.) Ultimately, Ramirez is appreciative of the shoutout, but it’s not a tune he’d normally listen to. “I’ve heard it probably a couple of times, and I really can’t get into the rapping thing,” he said. “I’m a hopeless romantic, so I like the sappy love songs.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
