Season 15

Been MIA as life has been a little insane.  Moved back to KTown, turned 25, ended the season at TNC.  BUT I’M BACK.

I forgot to eat dinner last night.

It wasn’t until I pushed into my apartment that my stomach kicked in and reminded me that I had eaten little more than a sandwich, a gin-tonic, and a Cafe Dulce iced coffee all day.

Last night was the final Tuesday Night Cafe show for the season. For those who don’t know, we organize a free multidisciplinary show every first and third Tuesday of the season running from April to October. The intention was to create a consistent Asian American arts scene, to bring young people into LA Little Tokyo, and to utilize the (at the time) new Union Center for the Arts.

15 seasons later, our founder Traci is stepping back to concentrate on building other programs within our larger organization, Tuesday Night Project. Last night was a waterfall of love for her and the space. I have never heard the name “traci” more in a 2 hour period of my life.

It was also a passing of the torch…I am privileged to take over the role starting today.

But what made last night amazing was as always…the people. I kept neglecting to grab The Park’s Finest we have posted to the side for staff, performers, and volunteers because when I wasn’t making sure stuff was going smooth I was running into old friends, meeting new people, and introducing folks to the space. It was a night of serious reflection for long time artists and members of the staff, yet through all the names people didn’t know and inside jokes they didn’t get, the people “got” it and stayed, laughed, and cried.

And CRIED!

I’ve had like 4 people tell me that they cried even though they walked into the courtyard with no more than a base understanding of what TNC was. And I’ve had folks beyond that ask how they can get involved!

It really reaffirmed for me that the most important thing for me to do is to make sure that no matter how many faces change, how many SNAFUs arise, no matter how the community shifts, that I have to, at the heart of it, keep our ship moving to the needs and vision that traci and her crew set out to focus on when they first hit the mic in 1999. To support artists, to bridge communities, and to put on a show that the audience can absorb, process, and build from.

The people will always “get it”.

April will come sooner than we think, and I really hope that you will put April 1st on your calendar as the first show of the 16th season. It will be the start of a fresh chapter with an old soul.

And I am going to go in on this breakfast sandwich.

Thank you to the staff, performers, audience members, and volunteers who made it happen. Special shout out to my friends who were able to make it out on a school night. It really really meant more than you can imagine.

The Long Haul

Photo credit: Daren Mooko

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.”

– traci kato-kiriyama, “Oldest-And-Still-Running-Blah-Blah-Blah…”

What is a community without the storytellers.

Ni Una Mas

I’ve spent a better part of the past 24 hours reading through Facebook statuses lamenting the ruling in the Zimmerman case, and all I can think about is how much I need to get off my phone.  The ruling came down last night and my feed is still a solid stream of hoodies, anger, and through all that, a tiny glimmer of hope.

Between a late start this morning, breakfast, some family coordination and finally a writing meeting in the evening, I only managed to catch the end of an action in Boyle Heights organized by the East LA “Ni Una Mas/Not One More Coalition” formed in response to the case.

My family is originally from Boyle Heights, a neighborhood that has been a revolving door of ethnic groups for the past century but currently home to a sizable and lively Latin@ community.  I took my favorite parking spot in JTown, walked to the train station, then caught the Gold Line east.

Sometimes I forget how close Little Tokyo is to East LA.  How the streetcar used to bring folks to JTown, and how even today it’s a straight shot down First to cross the river and hit Little Tokyo.  I think about how far we seem from each other, but how our actual physical distance alone reaffirms the nonexistence of ethnic communities as solitary beings, and how there is such hope for coalition building between us all.

I spent a little more time at Mariachi Plaza after the action was over.  I walked to the other side of the station, taking in the dancing and wonderful smells of Sunday-night pupusas and tamales.  The sun fell as I descended into the subway, taking with it the haunting pollution-purple hue of the Los Angeles sky.

We will keep building our communities, keep building our coalitions, and keep building our minds.  We will work together so that there will be not one more.

10:55PM

My favorite writing spot closes at 11PM and I usually get into a good rhythm at 10:55.

I’ll be long done with my tea, the crowd will have thinned out, and I will have overplayed whatever song I have chosen to write to, and the divine will pass through me and to my keyboard with 5 minutes left and the staff already cleaning the bathroom.

So I write as I pack to fool the staff into thinking I’m leaving and to fool myself into thinking that the staff actually buys the charade.

I’ll do the laptop dance where I stand up and start folding my power cable while typing between loops of the cord. When not typing I stare at the screen to proofread the last paragraph and make mental notes of what I want to write next.

Next, I do the stand and type. This makes the staff think I’m just making last minute adjustments…is what I say to myself as the staff gets more and more irritated that this guy bought a tea four hours ago and refuses to leave.

Oh did they announce that the cafe is closed? Twice? To me specifically? I can’t hear them over the headphones I’ve conveniently decided to turn the volume up on.

It’s already 11:01 as I get to the end of what I have so far (by this point they are, understandably, literally trying to sweep me out of the store), so I’ll just pick up my laptop and slowly close the clamshell as I type with one hand. I put my backpack on for extra effect, and also I look better with a backpack on anyhow. If I’m going to take up unwelcome space I should at least try to look decent doing so.

Finally, with a dull snap, I close my laptop and clean up the table. They’ve blacklisted me by the point. Or they would have blacklisted me by now if that was a thing.

Instead, I will be back next week to do it all again. Perhaps, this time I will choreograph new moves to keep the process going. Pehaps I should start tipping…

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.

Third Night of Meetings in JTown

I think I’m drinking too much tea.

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.