Little Tokyo Cafe Closes

I couldn’t afford to eat at the Tokyo Cafe in college, but I loved their spam musubis.

A JTown institution, the Tokyo Cafe (from the few times I actually ate the food) has BOMB dishes and a wall full of celebrity endorsements. I spent a summer interning with my community family over at Visual Communications, and considering it shared a courtyard with the Union Center of the Arts I have no idea why I chose penny pinching over eating there more (the money I saved most likely went to ill-advised hat purchases…it was a weird time full of fedoras and reversible beanies). Unfortunately, for all the times I was there for work, for all the Tuesday Night Cafes they hosted, and for all the time I’ve walked past the restaurant, I have eaten there sparingly and now they are closing. Today is their last day of business. Boom. Gone. To prep for dark days without the chasiu/shu mai combo, the homies with jobs in JTown organized a lunch for folks to hang out at, but I have work so obviously I can’t just stop by on the fly.

This happens often. A community meeting will happen. A street will get renamed. A restaurant will open. A restaurant will shutter its windows. Meanwhile, I will be at my desk tasking away, after which I will head back home to Gardena. I do not work in JTown. I do not live in JTown. I do not live anywhere near JTown, but with all the time I spend in the spot (I am the mayor of the “J-Town” Foursquare check in, thank you very much), I own it as a part of my geographic identity in this crazy city. I miss so much that happens during the day, catching up once every few weeks on the latest gossip or messed up-corporate decision that we need to rectify.

My reality, however, is exploring JTown as more than the physical space. It is a vibe, it is an urban identity, and it is the core of our history and identities. It is a physical brick and mortar manifestation of identities and histories that we’ve built over the century+ we’ve lived in this country. What I invest in JTown I am really investing in the longevity of a narrative that belongs to myself, my family, and my community.

There’s an amount of power in that, power that fuels the self determination that extends out to the whole of our community (Asian American, not just Japanese American). Businesses will close, businesses will open. Like a kid away from home I will miss births, deaths, and milestones. But in the end, I am lucky in that I can always return to share the happiness, the grief, and the movement forward.

Fly.

I’ve been hunched over my computer for the past three hours at Cafe Dulce, working on some writing in between sips of iced tea.

As I transition from paragraph to paragraph, I have been taking time breathe and look out the window and I must say that while I knew this to be true to a certain degree already, I have noticed that JTown people are FLY.

It could just be LA.  It could just be that as a city we have collectively imbibed the catwalk Kool Aid so deeply that we dress up to check out mailboxes (as if we have mailboxes).  However, I have seen no shortage of pomade, flowly dresses, and dolled up eyelids walking about the paper lanterns and stone gardens today.

Are we seeing the rise (or have we been seeing the rise) of a trendy Little Tokyo?  With the LT Design week a few years ago and the sudden explosion of streetwear in the ‘hood, is JTown a physical manifestation of the “Japan Cool” that hit in the ’90s and has somehow managed to keep hold?

What does that mean for JTown’s history as an ethnic enclave, a former ghetto, and a battleground that has pitted activists and organizers against city redevelopment efforts?  What does that mean for JTown’s historical love/hate relationship with Japanese interests who have gone as far as destroying affordable housing to build office buildings?  What does that mean for me sitting here in my t-shirt and scuffed up jeans?

Meanwhile, I am out of tea and I need a haircut.  Perhaps I will come back on another, less trendy day.

Johneric is a Homie

JTown was on the brink of dying.  Folks would avoid an empty First and Central at night and the community did not (and arguably still does not) have a good relationship with the neighboring Skid Row.

So when the Union Center for the Arts opened, there was an opportunity. Artist/community organizer traci kato-kiriyama saw the courtyard in front, and with some friends and artists put together a show that would later be called “Tuesday Night Cafe“, a free, volunteer-run, multi-bill and multi-discipline show aimed at bringing people and art to JTown while simultaneously creating a consistent Asian American art space.  Held every first and third Tuesday, TNC features six booked acts and three open mic slots with artists stretch from spoken word artists to singers to dancers to beyond.  Once we had a fire spinner.  Never again.

I showed up at Tuesday Night Cafe during the tenth season. An over-energized college freshman, I hit one of the open mic slots and read a poem I’d written the week before.

Hosting that night, as he did every night, was Johneric Concordia, this powerful-looking Filipino American dude whose voice was simultaneously thunder and a pat on the back. He told the crowd stories of how the space started with a karaoke machine and that it was built off the backs and donations of the community.

I didn’t know at the time how TNC was itself such a community. I didn’t know that Johneric had been organizing with Kabataang maka-Bayan, a Filipino youth organization, for years, or that he had shown up before TNC was even TNC, performing at a precusor called “Art Attack.” I didn’t know that he was a writer, a singer, and a BBQ pitmaster. I didn’t know that he had lost a homie due to the broken healthcare system and that TNC had provided him a space to heal.

But over the course of the five years I’ve been going to Tuesday Night Cafe as an audience member and later as an organizer, I have come to discover these dimensions as I have about so many other folks in the space. TNC is about connecting people and communities, organizations and artists, and everyone with Little Tokyo. It is about having the conversations that reveal the amazing differences that make our community so vibrant and it is about people. Not superstars, not celebrities, but the everyday people who have so many layers, each reinforcing the structure that was laid for us so many years ago.

Johneric is stepping back as host after a decade of holding the mic. He has opened a restaurant called The Park’s Finest BBQ, a Filipino-style BBQ joint with sauce that will complete your life, and so he is retiring in order to churn out trays of bibingka cornbread and coconut beef.

He is leaving the space as host, but he is still and always will be one of the many people who keep TNC going and who complete this community. JTown would not be JTown without folks like him, and I am proud, honored, and blessed to say that Johneric is a homie.

The Museum

I have always seen The Japanese American National Museum as a treasure.  As with every organization there are always kinks, but on the whole our community is so privileged to have an institution that documents our history.

Like many other JA families, my family has a grip of heirlooms in JANM and why not? My grandparents (particularly my grandma) helped facilitate its inception and my earliest memories of JTown are filtered through midday folding sessions with Ruth, the weekend origami instructor. Flash forward to 2013 and I have been to numerous panels at the National (now “Inouye”) Center for the Preservation of Democracy and after over two decades of visiting “The Museum,” I have informally walked countless friends and fellow organizers through the permanent Common Ground exhibit.

This exhibit does a great job of explaining JA history from first wave immigration to the camp story, but starts to trickle off after 1945, pushing forty years of social/political growth, rebuilding, and cultural development into one room.  And then nothing happens after 1988 (coincidentally the year I was born, so…I hope the drop off isn’t my fault.)  No doubt the camp story is extremely important and ever-relevant, but by peaking the narrative there, the museum forgets the decades following which pushed forward recovery, empowerment, self-determination, and community building.  It almost feels like our own stories as yonsei or even sansei are not worth commenting on, adding to the self-fulfilling conversation about the youth distancing ourselves from the JA community.

It seems things are changing.

With new leadership has come a new canvas for the curators to play with.  “American Tapestry: 25 Stories from the Archive” dusted off some pretty interesting and rarely told stories of important figures throughout JA history while going beyond the camp story.  The current exhibit, “Visible & Invisible: A Hapa Japanese American History,” has focus on the early 1900s, but takes the story to present day in a pretty striking manner, looking at both Japanese American and Japanese approaches to mixed race identity.  There’s even a banner featuring our good friend Jero.  I’m finding myself more and more intrigued by the programming, and the newly former young leadership advisory committee is bringing younger and younger programming to the building.

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend some very swanky JANM events including the annual gala (bomb dessert, by the way), placing my spike-pierced ears and grassroots vocabulary next to CEOs and big time philanthropists.  While I certainly felt out place, being pushed out of my element reminded me of the diversity in our community and how ultimately, no matter how we express it, we are all working towards preserving our community’s story as a gateway towards social change and community strength.  The museum is one way to do this.

My mom talks about the importance of museums becoming more than just a knowledge base and instead a full, well rounded experience. Curated experiences are ultimately how museums will attract a younger, more tech-saavy audience. This doesn’t mean everything needs to be touch screen with a mobile component, it just means that in the 21st century, facts are for Wikipedia and it is up to the institutions to contextualize the data.

Japanese America did not end in 1945. It did not end in 1988 with Redress. With an invaluable archive and upcoming exhibits around tattoos, the Dodgers, and Hello Kitty, JANM has the opportunity to rethink itself as a space that reflects the widening JA community and interacts with a JA community that is slowly coming back together.  And it looks like they’re taking that opportunity seriously.

The Arts District

A few years ago, Little Tokyo officially got a neighbor. Or perhaps Little Tokyo always had a neighbor and that neighbor got a sign.

The Little Tokyo/Arts District area is coming up as a hotbed for art and creativity. The Arts District, my favorite place to park and get hipsterdinner, has slowly been growing and gaining residents, attractions, and Instagram tags.

To me there is great significance in the Arts District’s residence next to JTown considering the history of art, activism, and cultural exchange that Little Tokyo has been a catalyst for. Housing could be a little cheaper, but that is nothing new.

Tonight sees the opening of a new gallery show called “In Your Face: How Artists Transformed LA’s Urban Landscape” at Angel City Brewery.  While the tagline itself sold me, one line in the description got me going: “A visual tribute to the Atomic Cafe”

Once upon a time, the Atomic Cafe was a mom & pop resturant in JTown. The daughter of that mom & pop, Nancy Sekizawa, was part of the punk movement that hit LA and invited a number of notable punk rockers to come eat, party, and trash the restaurant. She’s calmed down quite a bit since then, but “Atomic Nancy” remains a bit of a folkhero for many younger JA artists.

The Atomic Cafe building now houses Senor Fish (try the garlic fries), but will be leveled to make way for a new Metro project. It excites me to see this history being preserved in the Arts District, and I hope it leads to more conversations. After all. If we’re going to have a joint sign, we may as well do some joint work.

“In Your Face – How Artists Transformed LA’s Urban Landscape” will be on display at Angel City Brewery from April 11 – June 29.

It is sponsored by Los Angeles Downtown Arts District Space, District Gallery and Angel City Brewery.

In 1886…

Charles Kame opened a restaurant at 340 East First Street.

And then JTown happened.