Boogie Nights

I grew up in SF’s Japantown on Post Street, an urban palimpsest reflecting numerous fragmented stories of people who came through and made their mark in time. Some stories lay hidden beneath new pavement and buildings. A single Victorian house with a barbershop stands tucked between two 60’s pseudo Japanese buildings. It used to belong to a Black family who settled there during the Japanese Internment period, when Harlem West was booming down the street at Bop City. The barbershop is right next to the Korea House restaurant and nightclub that my parents own and where my mother and father first met in 1969. At the entrance of the restaurant, the sun-baked pictures of entrees in the light box are cracking and some of them have fallen out of place.

To the right of the light box are two large wooden doors with brass hardware reminiscent of old Korean chests. Gumdrop knobs circle a butterfly shaped disc from which two large heavy rings dangle. I have always loved tugging on these rings and feeling the weight of the wooden doors as I lean back with all of my weight. The doors suspend open for a moment, just enough time for me to walk through and as the door shuts, a gust of wind saturated with the smell of aged oak rushes against my back, tossing my hair in all directions. A carpeted staircase on the right leads up to the restaurant and on the left, is an entranceway into the nightclub.

The centerpiece of the restaurant is a large wooden shelf painted to resemble a Greek column. It is filled with an eclectic array of bric-a-brac that my dad had collected over the years: a porcelain Samuel Adams, a bowling pin, turkey shaped bottles, and his most prized possession, a soccer ball from the Korean national soccer team.

In 1969, Korea House was the only Korean business in Japantown, and according to my dad, my parents were not particularly welcome. There was still a lot of resentment and discrimination between Koreans and Japanese. The redevelopment agency did not make the situation any easier. Urban renewal legislation gave cities the power to assemble and clear off land, to remove so-called blighted areas, and Japantown was the first site to be redeveloped. They came in by force, displacing hundreds of small business owners and residents, and sold property that once belonged to the Japanese American community to outside buyers, like my parents.

Despite all this upheaval, the seventies were happening times for my parents’ generation. Many of them were Korean immigrants who came to the states after the immigration act passed in 1965. They were in their 20s and 30s, fresh out of college or the Korean army and ready to experience a brave new world. The restaurant and nightclub were bustling. My dad wore fly collar silk Dunhill shirts with gold embellishing everything from his teeth to his belt buckle. His hair was permed and his cheeks full from prosperous boogie nights. He loved seeing people dressed in their most ostentatiously hip attire. He also loved having a good time and if people weren’t having a good time, he gave them a concoction of his own invention that usually involved a drink or two on the house, and something to smoke. Even the cops frequented the club, and in exchange for a little Korean style lovin’, they made sure everything ran smoothly. People were excited to find a place where they felt at home and could meet people with similar histories. This is where a community came to life-where people could be themselves and enjoy their very existence-where individual experiences, places and cultures melded effortlessly to create a new collective American experience and memory.


This is a story of a community in SF. This story is one of many stories that are being told and are still unknown. The majority of Korean immigrants who came to SF did not know or experience American History before 1965. Koreans came to the US after the Civil Rights Movement, a pivotal time in American history that brought marginalized people together to fight for their place in America. If it was not for the Civil Rights Movement, the immigration act that admitted Korean immigrants to the states would not have been passed. Our Japanese Americans neighbors, on the other hand, had ancestors who settled in Japantown in the early 1900s. Their families endured double displacement; once with the internment camps in 1942, and then with redevelopment beginning in the 1950s. The lack of shared knowledge in the events that had occurred in this neighborhood, the western addition that included both the Fillmore and Japantown, is what kept Koreans and Japanese Americans from understanding one another. The only experience they shared was the history of Japan’s colonization of Korea, and it is interesting what happens to history once it is in the context of America. The older generation Koreans and Japanese still harbor the resentment towards one another, but as their children and grandchildren became more Americanized and distanced from this history, they are finding a way to create a new history together.

Today, thirty years later, Japantown is struggling to preserve its heritage as a Japanese cultural center. The younger generation is moving away as new immigrant communities move in. Korean businesses are ubiquitous in the area and the space where the nightclub used to be is quiet. The music has moved beyond the walls to long forgotten closets. Once you become an adult, its time to tuck away irresponsible and shameful stories of youth, behind Confucius sages and Christian morals. The disco ball still hangs where it has always been and the white grand piano where I spent tedious hours playing Hanon exercises, is now collecting dust in the corner. Sometimes, when I hear the right song or see an old photo of the space, the laughter echoes in the silence and the stains in the walls dance with people’s gestures. I want to capture the memories that linger here for my family but also for the collective memories of the Korean community in San Francisco so that their history will be remembered in a larger memory of America.

I was five years old when my parents opened their nightclub in San Francisco’s Japantown. After dinner, I would run downstairs from the restaurant to sit at the bar for a drink. Depending on my craving for maraschino cherries, my drink of choice was the Virgin Pina Colada or Shirley Temple. The room was dazzling and spinning to the music as lanky women in shimmering one-piece suits were rockin’ on stage to cover versions of popular Korean and American songs. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Abba’s “Dancing Queen” were some of my personal favorites. The light from the disco ball caught glimpses of private moments in the dark booths as it glided around the room, over a wall of silhouette drawings, along the white Yamaha grand piano, to the band on stage, “The Ladies of Jade.” The band members would come over to the bar on their break. Occasionally they would take notice of me and pinch my cheeks or tickle me. I didn’t care what they did to me. They were my heroes. I still remember details like their eighties glam rock look mixed with the smell of my mom’s face cream, the sound of gold bangles clinking against each other as they moved their arms, and the deep, husky voice of the lead singer as she said, “Julie darling where’s your daddy?.” When they went back on stage, the smell of perfume and cigarette smoke would linger and I took one long deep inhale so I wouldn’t forget the moment. This story is for my parents who had the audacity to make the world a better place for their friends and family, to Ronald Takaki who inspired me to pursue after an American memory, and to the Ladies of Jade who helped me to remember.