Summer in the City

Summer time!  It’s summer time!  Cold tea and pizza time!

I am amazed at the volume of out of towners who show up in JTown during the summer.  Sitting on the steps of the old Higashi Temple waiting for a friend, I must have ruined at least 10-15 photos by people trying to document the ancient facade with their ancient digital cameras.  No Instagramming today.  All the smartphoners are on their bikes as part of CicLAvia.

I wonder, sometimes where they all come from.  They can’t all be from out of town, I highly doubt that our three block radius is hitting the front page of the Lonely Planet guide anytime soon.  Perhaps they are Westsiders cautiously venturing east of LA Brea.  Perhaps they are commuters, curious about the Gold Line stop they always pass through.  Perhaps they are daytrippers from OC, Santa Barbara, San Diego, looking for a bite to eat and a curiosity to pin on their Pinterest.

Regardless, they are here, and perhaps they will be back.  Perhaps they will become regulars, perhaps they will not return.  Perhaps they will be at a party and mention the bacon donut they got the other day at some cafe in Little Tokyo.  Perhaps they will be at a party spitting game and suggest dinner at this Japanese place they discovered some odd Sunday months ago.

It is summer in the city, and the days are long in JTown.  Out of towners and locals welcome.

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.