| Aug072009 | Seattle Weekly’s “Ragin’ Asians” |
I have to link you to this article, Seattle Weekly’s article on the city’s “Ragin’ Asians”. It hits all the right spots of being entertaining, deceivingly relevant, infuriating, and depressing. It talks about Asians (mostly Vietnamese and Cambodian) hitting the clubs hard and what a typical weekend is like for them.
Before you read my comments, know that they are totally anecdotal and I am most likely completely wrong. These are just my personal views and I invite you to come and change my mind.
The guests are partying in a three-bedroom condo… just a couple miles away from Southcenter Mall.
That explains a lot. The people I’ve seen out and about in Seattle are not the same kind I see in the club. I guess I’m so blind that I thought all that existed were eastside and westside, I forgot that a lot of people show up from south of Seattle.
At 29, Pham is older than most of his club-going friends, but he looks younger. He was a homebody in a serious relationship during his early 20s who’s now making up for lost time.
I’ve seen a lot of older Asian guys around in the Seattle clubs. You know why? Because they get to spend their weekends with drunk-ass 21-year-old Asians. 90% of guys anywhere would sign up for that.
The gaggle of girls at his house could easily pass for sisters—sorority sisters, anyway. They’re wearing strikingly similar dresses from Forever 21. Two of them—identical twins—look like they’re in middle school, but are actually 20. They plan to get into Venom by waiting outside the club for a friend who’s already gained entry to return with the IDs of those inside.
The article mentions Forever 21 a lot. Either Erika Hobart is being condescending about the brand or she’s being paid to promote it. There’s little other reason to mention it by name over and over.
“I have some white friends who won’t even go [to Venom],” Mom says, laughing. “It’s too Asian for them. For us, it’s like family. Everybody knows each other there.”
Truth. Seattle clubs are to Asians what Cheers was to Norm Peterson. That’s because they go to the same club every week and see exactly the same people. Frankly, I hate to see the same crowd over and over at a club but I guess to them it’s like Thanksgiving every weekend.
Twenty minutes later, the three cars pull into a pay-to-park lot a block away from Venom. The alcohol has caught up to everybody, and several of the girls relieve themselves behind cars. The guys are less concerned about urinating in public, and simply do it in the center of the lot. The girls throw their purses in the car trunks after emptying their bladders; they don’t spend money at the club.
God in Heaven. There are so many things wrong with this paragraph. I will begrudgingly give you a free pass on the public urination if it’s one of those catastrophic events that embarrass you forever and your friends keep telling the story but this is ridiculous. 1) You just came from some guy’s house, 2) It’s like a 20 minute drive? 3) You are about to step inside a club with bathrooms. Which part of your brain is telling you to pull the desperation move of peeing in a parking lot? How come you’re ok with pulling down your panties and hitching up your long shirt to piss yourself in the dark but you’re too good to buy your own drinks?
Sab, like a majority of the clientele, hits up Venom on weekends because she’s seeking the company of other Asians—not the people who fetishize them. Pham’s circle arrives at and leaves the club together. It’s like the Asian version of No Child Left Behind.
Erg, ok. First of all, the saying is, “No man left behind”. This would only be the Asian version of NCLB if everyone was given a standardized test at the end of the night, funding was allotted based on the scores and everyone’s personal info was sold to US military recruiters.
And yes, we Asians go clubbing as a pack and it’s usually pretty easy to spot the pack leader. I have no idea how anybody scores as a result of this. Sounds like you’d need to get digits and arrange a later meetup or just through caution to the wind and jump into a one-night stand where a large group of your friends and adopted family will see exactly what’s going on. Peeing in a parking lot is still kosher though.
“Let’s go to Purple Dot!” Mom screams. “I want baked spaghetti!”
I love the fact that someone is named “Mom”. It’s adorably fobby but it’s probably not pronounced the way I’m thinking.
This baked spaghetti thing she’s talking about? It’s actually pretty good. I was skeptical the first time I saw Diana ordering it while we were sitting around in Purple Dot at 2am but I’ve since been converted. For one thing, Purple Dot is an absolutely stellar restaurant after midnight. When you’ve been clubbing all night and feel desperately single and your standards and expectations have been drastically lowered by alcohol and rejection, Purple Dot is a shining beacon. And the spaghetti is like a bolognese baked into a casserole dish. It’s meaty and has a pasta-to-sauce ratio of about 1:1 and it’s almost sickly sweet like canned baked beans.
Overall, I think it’s a reasonable article. A bit too one-sided seeing as the author only went out once with a Vietnamese/Cambodian crowd from Tukwila but it captures the essence of it. It was probably dangerous to include so many generalizations in such an anecdotal article and that’s reflected in the comments, I guess.
Jack is a writer that’s lived in Seattle for the past two years. While he has not integrated into the club scene, it is common to find him at the parking lot outside Venom on Saturday nights, taking photos with a telephoto lens to sell to fetish websites.
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