It’s still, 7 years after moving to LA, odd to think of myself as part of the JTown community. I remember sitting in my high school bedroom scouring blogs and webforums, looking for some semblance of community to latch onto.
Yet here I am reading this guest blog post on Angry Asian Man by my friend/mentor traci kato-kiriyama about Little Tokyo and Tuesday Night Cafe, feeling that sense of familiarity that comes with knowing the landscape, both physical and intangible.
“I think all the time about Los Angeles and the PEOPLE who brought me up and those, of all ages, who continue to raise me. I think of the undeniable power of art to bridge people at a totally necessary heart and spirit level. That, if I didn’t have art, I wouldn’t know how to survive and if I didn’t have community, I’d have no reason to. I think about all these wonderful people we’re surrounded by, who are passionate as much as they are grateful and forgiving of each other and themselves in order to stay in it… for the long haul.”
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.
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.
Down Like JTown 