Madame Wong's

http://www.laweeklky.com/music/esther-wong-her-flawed-legacy-2174741

Esther Wong 1917-2005
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Hello Everyone:

Today #historichappyhour is taking over the blog to bring you the story of Madame Wong's, one of Los Angeles's fabled punk rock clubs. Madame Esther Wong passed away in 2005 but her legacy as the "Godmother of Punk" lives on.  Her fabled club played host to bands that would eventually become part of the new wave scene in the late seventies and early eighties.   Nikki Darling's April 26, 2012 article, "Esther Wong: Her Flawed Legacy" for the LA. Weekly, takes a critical look at how, if at all, Esther Wong played a role in Los Angeles's underground music scene.  More importantly, the club was part a rich history of entertainment, arts, and culture in Chinatown.   The question is who was Esther Wong?

Madame Wong;s Restaurant marquee
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Esther Wong was born and educated in Shanghai, China.  She traveled the world with her importer father before touching down in Los Angeles in 1949, to escape the incoming Communist regime. In Los Angeles, Madame Wong worked as clerk for a shipping company before opening her owns restaurant in 1970 at 949 Sun Mun Way with her now-deceased Hawaiian born husband Georg Wong. (http://www.demophonic.com accessed 10-21-15)

The restaurant was originally conceived as a Polynesian-themed venue, featuring tiki drinks (a favorite of the Happy Hour)  and tropical dance shows.  By 1978, the audiences for the tropical revues was dwindling and the restaurant began to book unsigned local rock bands.  The idea came from show promoter Paul Greenstein, who approached Madame Wong, "...proposing a a trial run with rock groups playing evenings for crowds paying $2.50 a head."  Esther Wong took it upon herself to choose the bands, listening to growing stacks of cassettes (back in ancient times before Sound Cloud existed) while driving around Los Angeles.  In 1980, she told a Los Angeles Times reporter, When there's a bad tape, I throw it outside the window...One day I almost hit the Highway Patrol car that was right next to me.  Some of the bands she chose to play at her club became part of the vanguard of new wave: Oingo Boingo, The Knack, the Go Go's, and the Plimsouls (google them).  The success of the new wave line up led to a second club in Santa Monica in 1978, which closed in 1991. (http://www.laweeklky.com/music/esther-wong-her-flawed-legacy-2174741 accessed 10-21-15)  Be that as it may, historicpca.blogspot.com is reminding the Happy Hour that this is a blog about architecture, historic preservation, urban planning and design.  Fine, killjoy.

949 Sun Mun Way today
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Chinese and Chinese-Americans have a long and storied history of being a part of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.  At the turn of the twentieth century, Old Chinatown included a theater/opera company that hired Chinese born performers.  As the community developed into a tourist destination and community center for new immigrant, vaudeville shows, featuring Chinese performers were quite common. (ohp.parks.ca.gov)  As Old Chinatown continued to grow as a tourist stop, it became a major meeting site for Hollywood directors, producers, and actors.  It was not uncommon for studio heads to take meetings at Chinese-American owned restaurants and nightclubs such as the Dragon's Den, which was decorated with murals by Tyrus Wong, an illustrator for Disney and Warner Brothers.  When the Old Chinatown was demolished and the new developments New Chinatown and China City went up, bars and restaurants preferred by the Hollywood glitterati included the Grand Star Restaurant in New Chinatown.  (Ibid)  The clubs, cultural institutions and restaurants continued to flourish during World War II and afterward.  The sixties brought demographic shifts and New Chinatown ceased to be a Hollywood nightlife hotspot.  In the late seventies and early eighties, it became the prime venue for the underground music scene.  Venues such as Madame Wong's and the Hong Kong Cafe became the prime performance spaces for Los Angeles's prime new wave bands.  (Ibid)

The Bags at the Hong Kong Cafe
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When Esther Wong passed away from lung cancer in 2005, her place in Los Angeles's rock music history was cemented by a Los Angeles Times obituary that hailed her as the "Godmother of punk."  The phrases quickly caught on as clubs sought and continue to seek a bit of that aura.  The problem is Madame Wong's role in the L.A. punk scene was "tangential at best and dubious at worst."  Alice Bag, lead singer and co-founder of the Bags wrote on her blog (alicebag.blogspot.com), not long after Madame Wong's death, She was no friend to punk rock.  According to Keith Morris,  former lead singer for one of the seminal Los Angeles punk bands Black Flag and Circle Jerks, Hong Kong Cafe was the real spot for punk.  The Hong Kong Cafe was located on the corner from Madame Wong's on Gin Ling Way, which played host to the Bags, the Weirdos, and the Germs, none of whom played Wong's.

According to Ms. Darling, most likely "Wong cared less about the scene than her club's bottom line.  While that certainly is not unreasonable for a business proprietor, it seems an odd stance for a purported godmother of punk."  Peter Case, lead signer and guitarist for the Plimsouls added, I don't know if she even liked the music...She cared about the club, about getting people in, getting them to buy drinks, food-that's what she was into.  Of course that has not stopped her legacy from growing over the years.

Circle Jerks at the Hong Kong Cafe
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While Esther Wong's choices leaned more towards bands such as the Go Gos and Oingo Boingo, the Hong Kong Cafe was the place for young punks.  The club opened in 1979, on heels of Madame Wong's success, with a rowdy show by Chicano punk band the Plugz. The two clubs quickly developed a rivalry to the point where Madame Wong declared that any band playing the Hong Kong would be banned from her club, both clubs's different agendas made this an empty threat.  The Hong Kong closed within two years of its opening but in the interim made a big impact, featuring important underground punk bands such as: the Bags, the Alley Cats, the Weirdos, and Catholic Disciples.  Ms. Darling writes, "Filmmaker Penelope Spheeris gathered much of the live footage for her documentary The Decline of Western Civilization on its premises."

The Hong Kong Cafe today
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Today, both venues retain their faux Chinese architecture.  The former site of Madame Wong's has become a loft development and the Hong Kong is now Realm, a housewares and gift retailer.  In 2010, former FYF Festival promoter Ben Kramer and some his roommates put together some shows on the actual former site of Madame Wong's hosting indie music acts: Wavves, Devendra Banhart, and Vampire Weekend.  In 2011, French promoter Simonez Wolf opened a pop-up club in Manhattan's Chinatown and called it Madame Wong's. Nikki Darling adds, "Wong's surviving family-none of whom could be reached to comment for this story-have remained mum abut the various appropriations of her name."

"Chinatown's Fourth Wave..."
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   Former LA. Weekly jazz columnist Brick Wahl wrote in 2010, I loved the Hong Kong and thought Wong's was completely bogus.  Of course, this is not to say that Wong's does not get credit for being a breeding ground for the boisterous music scene.  Peter Case told Ms. Darling, She stuck her neck out...There was some real resistance from the neighborhood when she first started, but it didn't seem to bother her.  At least she didn't let it show.  She was fierce.  Esther Wong's real legacy is that she had the foresight to seize on a period of Los Angeles rock music history that was percolating to the surface.  Her willingness to open herself to the new and different was a complete turn around from her own life experience.  This is her legacy.