Some images lately

The ol is on a throwing rampage.

Worker taking a break outside of Big Dish in Chinatown Oakland.

It's 7am.

Porkchop house on Christmas evening.

Christmas was busy for Porkchop House.  

City workers got the day off for Christmas.

 Super cool door latch in the restroom at Porkchop house.

My Christmas dinner courtesy of Suey Sing Tong at Porkchop House.

White People Love Chinatown

White people love SF Chinatown.  Everyone from the well heeled gentries to the young hipsters to the tourist to the homeless and mentally challenged.

This black tour guide hates Chinatown though.  

http://youtu.be/wesK3quatYE

Seems like the Chinese have abandoned Chinatown.  There are less and less Chinese living in Chinatown nowadays.  The are more and more Chinese enclaves all over the city and Bay Area.  Space is expensive and cramped in Chinatown.  New immigrants find our Chinatown old and distasteful compared to the mega malls throughout Asia nowadays.  

But perfect for gentries and hipsters whom can just walk to the financial district to work.  Not owning a car in the city saves a lot of money too.

The coming of the Central Subway to Chinatown will drastically change the whole character of the neighborhood too.  Jacking up land value, jacking up rents.  The future of San Francisco's Chinatown as a community is bleak.

Mou jahk ung

http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA5MTMyMDAxNA==&mid=200243453&idx=1&sn=d30f575d82d9f69fd7373b0d43189c95&scene=1&from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0#rd

Utopia dragons

 It's been more than a week since I touched this nine dragon mural at utopia cafe in Chinatown.

I've been having to deal with taxes, accounting and the goddamn lawsuit.

Tonight I keylined dragon #4, #5 and #6. 

I'm gonna redo #7 a bit.  I don't like the left claw and body.  Gotta make that neck skinnier too.

In the meantime they're getting antsy at chsa about my mural there.  I need four hours straight of penciling in the image using the digital projector.

I've been a bit under the weather.  With the changing of the season, I had a sore throat the last few days and it was really difficult swallowing.  I've been really exhausted too.

Progress tonight

It's been more than ten days since I've last touched this mural.  Here's my progress tonight. I added keylines to dragons #2, #3 and #4.

Time To Move On.

 

My residence at CHSA is coming to an end at the end of this year for sure.  It's been a good two years.  It was good exposure to be a part of the museum.  Can't say if it got my any sales or commissions though.  But it was good that a Chinatown organization was at least supportive of my art and photography.  Through the residence I was able to showcase my art and photography to the community.  It has been my experience that Chinatown as a community has not been supportive of local Chinatown artists.  

Now I have to look for another studio space.  I may have to look to moving to pier 70.  But I must say...it's pretty spooky out there at night, given my habit of working into the night.  Then there's the plumbing out there.  There's no plumbing and the restroom is a portapottie.  There is no real building structure neither.  Everything was just nailed together.  Because it's prime development land, the place may get sold at anytime and I'm out of there in no time.  

If I have to move I most likely will not be able set up my screenprinting operation wherever the family will move.  Which means I will have to most likely give away my t-shirt screen printing operation.

I am seriously considering getting a job as a taxi driver.   With my luck, I will fall asleep at the wheel......

dragon mural at utopia cafe

I am working on a mural with nine dragons at the utopia cafe.  It's been taking me so long because I can only go in from 9pm and on.  Nice part is they let me stay there by myself and let myself out.  Bad part is I'm only getting paid $1,500 for the project.  Bad part is I'm am to do a mural at CHSA also.  Bad part is I'm going through a force partition lawsuit by the brother and I'm worried about what will happen to the house I live in.  Where I am to live from here on.  What will happen to all my belongings and the though of having to throw away a lot of the things.

Could Exercise Make Your Diabetes Worse? or Short Burst Training to Lowe...

would doing tit sin keun a few times a day help?

梁廚美食 - 星州炒米

飲食男女 大師姐 《不如在家吃》 星洲炒米

飲食男女 827期 高校教室 炒米粉怎樣才夠彈爽？

飲食男女 818期 高校教室 炒河粉樣才乾身不油膩？

High School Graduation

Whelp...the baby daughter finally graduated from Galileo.  The last of a twelve year quest starting from five years old in kindergarten at Spring Valley, then Marina Middle School and then Galileo High School....all three of them.

From here they are adults.

I'm not to sure where baby daughter is planning.  She has not spoken to me for six months.  She's still mad at me for changing the channel to watch a football game.

I am worried if I can pay her college tuition.

Photographic Justice at the 145th Golden Spike event in Utah

I made it out to the 145th Anniversary of the Golden Spike event in Utah.

I went because fellow photographer Corky Lee wanted to do this flash mob of many Chinese at the two locomotives.  145 years ago there were no Chinese in the photo though the Chinese played a major role in the building the transcontinental railway.

I always had a problem with that.  I started to paint a mural at the Chinese Historical Society of America's museum where I am an artist in residence.  When Corky told me what he was doing, I wanted to be a part of it.

The local Chinese community of Salt Lake City organized the Chinese community and loaded three tour buses full to the Golden Spike event.  The event organizers accommodated us to get that picture.

I took Amtrak to Salt Lake City.  Arriving there at 3am was a bit rough.

We got to check out the railroad museum in Ogden.  We took a light rail called the Front Runner there.  That evening we went to Ho Ho restaurant for dinner.

The following day after a simple lunch at Little Taste Chinese restaurant, there was a press conference at the State Capitol.  Both the Governor and Mayor  whom were to present proclamations did not show up.  That evening the local Chinese group CATS-UT treated us to dinner at the Golden Dragon.

On the third day we boarded the buses at 7am for the 90 minute bus ride to the Golden Spike event.  It's out in the middle of nowhere!  Apparently the railroad does not run through there nowadays and the two replica locomotives are there only for show.  Other than us 175 or so Chinese...there were about the 200 regular (white) people there for the event.

That evening we were treated to a bbq at Ze and Andy's house.

We got stuck out in Salt Lake city by two days as a rockslide in Wyoming, tornadoes in Nebraska and a freak snow storm in Colorado delayed us from leaving till Tuesday evening.  And it wasn't till 2am that we boarded the train on Wednesday morning.

I first went to Salt Lake City back in 1979 to lion dance for the Keelung sister city and Pioneer Day parade.  A lot has changed since.  There were probably three Chinese restaurants in Salt Lake City back then.  The food was so so....but nowadays there are many Chinese restaurants and some are suprisingly pretty good.  South State Street which seems to be the main drag now has many Chinese restaurants.  There's a new Chinatown mall that opened last year with a fancy gateway.  And of course many Chinese and Asians in Salt Lake City.

Miss Teen Chinatown

so....I designed this poster for the Miss Teen Chinatown contest.  The SF Chinatown haven't done this contest for four years.  My design became the program cover as well.  Got paid $200.  ooh wow...

Harriet had me photograph the event.  For free.  But they had an official photographer too... so it was like I was the backup.  And of course non-paid.

The farthest the photos went was the local Chinese press.  I don't know if the mainstream press ignored it or someone in the SF Chinatown Lion's Club didn't bother to inform them or what.  Maybe their press person still has the Chinatown ghetto mentality.  I dunno....

Leway Reunion

 

The Leway Reunion just happened this last weekend and I must say it was quite a reunion.  Over three hundred people attended the sold out event at Four Seas.  Judging by the noise level, everyone was having a good time.

By the way, I'm still taking orders for this poster.  It measure 20" x 30" and mounted on heavy board for $45.  Send?  Sure...add $10.  I'm sure it's gonna cost more than that to send.  Plus I have to get cardboard for it.   Paypal me:  lwongphoto@yahoo.com

Darkie

It's interesting how long this Darkie company got away with their products for so long... I think it was like in the mid 80's that they finally changed their name to Darlie.  I got this roll of mints sometimes in 1986 in Hong Kong.  Still got it! 

Dumpling Wars II

What?!  It's been over four months since I made an entry here?  OK OK ...here goes...

Gearing up for the Dumpling Wars 2.  I figured out how to make my own aspic.  Used canned chicken broth and gelatin.  Two packs per can...makes a pretty tough aspic.

We used Norm's mixer to knead the dough this time.  It worked well...but at the end just a bit of hand kneading does it.

Then made some Xiao Long Bao's with it.  We used a pasta maker this time to make the skin nice and thin.  Used an old can as our cutter...worked really good!

Into the bamboo steamers they go!  About less than ten minutes and ....

mmmm...mmm....xiaolongbao.  with real hot soup gushing out when you bite into it.

ok ok...the skin was still a tad thick....we'll adjust the pasta maker.

But better yet...come to the Dumpling Wars II...it's this Saturday.  For more information CLICK HERE.

See you there...we're We Grew Up In San Francisco Chinatown.