UWS + Stop Asian Hate Rally / Jeremy Long
A great week overall. A very busy week. This was week 2 of hanging out with Andrew in NY and we had a packed schedule.
Friday:
Met up with ToAnnie in Ktown at BCD. Got overpriced but delicious boba at Machi Machi
Saturday:
Mostly hung out in UWS. A bit of a scouting trip since I’m considering moving there
Liked it a lot! Doesn’t feel too crowded but has a lot more to do than Prospect Heights. There’s a good amount of racial diversity as well. Everyone seemed extremely friendly. This was my first time in my 2+ years of living in NYC where someone purposefully made eye contact with me and greeted me in the streets. Not only did this happen for me for the first time this past Saturday in UWS but it also happened AGAIN in the same day on another street in the neighborhood. What is going on UWS?!?!
Andrew and I discussed why this might be happening and we both considered it might be a response to the mass shootings in Atlanta that targeted Asians. Both of our greeters seemed to be well-meaning older white people that may have been trying to be more welcoming to Asians? Or maybe people are just significantly nicer in UWS.
Our first stop in UWS was at Jing Fong. Pretty expensive dim sum but man oh man those vibes. I read somewhere that UWS is almost like the Europe of NYC and it felt that way at Jing Fong. Perfect 60 degree weather with outdoor seating chewing on xiao long bao, shiu mai, and bbq pork buns while having a conversation with a close friend. That’s good living right there.
After food we walked a bunch. Went through Hudson River Greenway (a lil park by the waterfront). Wandered through the different streets. Seems like UWS is kinda dead above the mid to high 80s and dead below 72nd so I’ll try to look in between if I end up moving there.
Got an early dinner at Jacob’s Pickles. What a wonderful place. Southern food serving huge portions with everything pretty much dripping with oil and fat. A bunch of outdoor seating with plenty of opportunities for people watching while slowly making your way through a pile of food. A literal pile of food.
We got the poutine and the hot fried chicken (with grits) and it pretty much knocked us both out. Throughout this trip Andrew had been talking a big game about being able to eat a ton (to be fair he did eat a ton on this trip) but even he could not conquer the mountain of poutine. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
We ended the night in my home neighborhood and got drinks at BierWax. This was actually my first time drinking in a bar in my neighborhood (I live alone, don’t like drinking alone, and on the few occasions I drink I end up in Manhattan). It was great!
The theme (if you’d even call it a theme) is the bartenders pick random records to play throughout the night. Mostly heard older R&B like Otis Redding but also some salsa music if I remember correctly. The outdoor patio in the back gave off Jupiter’s vibes (shoutout to my Berkeley readers who know what this is… man I miss Berkeley).
Drank some flavored mead for the first time. Pretty tasty and goes down easy.
From this day alone I can confidently promote Jacob’s Pickles to one of my top 10 NY restos and Bierwax to one of my top 10 NY bars (to be fair this list is only 3-4 entries long).
Sunday:
Made our way to Chinatown to join the Stop Asian Hate rally. I was slightly hungover and wanted coffee so we popped into Kam Hing. Cheap and delicious. Got a Vietnamese coffee and a sponge cake for 4 bucks or something. Can’t remember the last time in NY I was so shocked by how little I was paying for something.
As we walked towards Columbus park to join the rally we accidentally joined a separate protest walking through the streets demonstrating Asian and Black solidarity. It was a day of protests. Literally in the span of a few blocks there were three different protests going on.
I’m always looking out for that Korean flag
Hasan Minhaj said this in Homecoming King:
My dad’s from that generation like a lot of immigrants where he feels like if you come to this country you pay this thing like the American dream tax. Like you’re going to endure some racism but if it doesn’t cost you your life then hey you lucked out. Pay it. There you go Uncle Sam. But for me like a lot of us I was born here so I actually had the audacity of equality. I was in honors gov I have it right here. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness all men are created equal. Says it right here. I’m equal. I’m equal. I don’t deserve this.
They could yell at us to go back to China while driving by in their cars or call us Jackie Chan or do the slanty eye thing or speak down to us like we didn’t know any English. But those things could be brushed off in the past. At least it isn’t worse.
But now we’re starting to realize it can absolutely be way worse and it will continue to get worse unless we do something. Asian people can be assaulted in the streets solely because they’re Asian. Asian people can get stabbed in the back with no words exchanged. Asian people can get shot by white supremacist scum and be gaslit and silenced when more white supremacist scum calls the shootings just a bad day, not a hate crime.
America has made it so easy to be outraged as an Asian American. That rage is a good thing and things will absolutely improve as long as we sustain that rage with the right actions.
The most important things we need as Asians (my current working theory) is
More representation in media
More representation in government
Cross community support/integration
Media
We’re dehumanized and vilified in media. The more Asian stories we tell the more we humanize ourselves to the American public. Hate comes from ignorance and ignorance can be reduced with the right stories in media.
Government
One of the speakers at the rally (Yuh-line Niou I think) mentioned that from a budget of billions of dollars only a couple hundred thousand were used to aid poor Asian communities. We need to be better organized and represented politically to get the right legislation in place to support our people
Cross community support/integration
Asian and Black solidarity is absolutely necessary for both communities. Minorities can not make it in America if we’re fighting amongst each other. Let’s be real though. There’s Anti blackness in Asian communities and Anti Asianness in Black communities.
Why is that?
Maybe because we never actually spend time with each other and dehumanize each other on baseless stereotypes.
We will have to go out of our way to make these connections. I’m an Asian American software engineer. Take a wild guess as to how many non-Asian minorities I interact/work with on a daily basis (although to be fair my latest team is slightly more diverse than previous ones).
Anyways that’s my current lite working theory on the whole situation.
On a somewhat related note I stumbled on this story about Asian American porn star Jeremy Long.
This dude leaves Berkeley law school to start a porn career because he hates how Asian males are emasculated in media and wants to thwart those stereotypes. That’s just the start of the story….
He then becomes a full fledged porn star and starts having almost way too much sex. He mentions in the article some sense of disillusionment:
There are some things we just know. The first “thing” and one that everyone, even those not considering porn at all should think about, is that there’s a ceiling to the amount of sex that will fulfill your life, and it’s quite low, and a place once reached, pretty disheartening… And those who have an unsuccessful sex-life at the heart of their unhappiness will quickly realize their unhappiness is grounded in something else.
And is pretty explicit later about how bad his life got because of porn (e.g. overdosing on Caverject).
Porn pretty much destroys his life and he hits rock bottom.
A friend tries to rouse him from rock bottom on Christmas Eve and convinces him to drive them to Hmong New Year in Fresno. They end up in a car crash (possibly due to his intoxication) and the friend eventually dies.
He starts chopping off joints of his finger in a Japanese custom called Yubitsume to show his remorse to the family. His wife ends up killing herself.
Crazy and tragic story.
Overall happy with how I spent my week. Hanging with Andrew made me realize how isolated I was living alone. Got used to it during the pandemic but now that things are opening up I realize there’s a whole world out there again.
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