San Francisco Bay Area insurance magnate and Asian American Donor Program founder Jonathan Leong has paper grandson roots to Locke’s late Jone Ho Leong, which makes her sons — Dan and Everett Leong — Jonathan’s paper uncles.… Anyway, back on July 10, the paper prodigal grandson paused on mid-Main Street in Locke at the old, boarded-up Star Theater — the town’s former cultural center for Cantonese opera.
Warped and leaning into the street, the charming structure is apparently suffering from old age — or from overuse as the leaning ex-bordello of Locke (sorry boys, only whites were admitted). Anyway, Jonathan lingered and mused about asking San Francisco architect Frank Fung to invest in a real fixer-upper — minus the accessories like the madam, ladies and johns.
NO CHINK’S STEAKS HERE: If you toss a coin, heads or tails, either way you lose at Al the Wop’s. Gaze up at Al’s dingy, lit ceiling: The flaky green isn’t peeling paint. Instead, they’re dollar bills tacked to the ceiling of the bar-restaurant. The tradition at Al’s is that you origami a silver dollar piece into a dollar bill with a thumbtack and toss it up. If you’re lucky, the bill sticks to the ceiling, and you get your change back .… The steak-pasta joint once was a Chinese restaurant that’s more suited to the moniker Al the Wok’s — more p.c. than Chink’s Steakhouse in Philly, Pa.
MOMMY LOCKE: Octogenarian Connie “Martin Luther” King, land-Locked since 1949, led off with her “I Connie King have a dream,” memorializing Locke and California Chinese men who built railroads and levees and jumpstarted agriculture in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. “As you know, Humphrey the Whale got a monument in Rio Vista [a nearby town],” King quipped, “so I think Locke deserves a monument … in memory of the Chinese men that worked so hard to help us in California.”
ENDANGERED SPECIES: Locke, like humpbacks, is on its own endangered-species list. Locke folks and friends could have wallpapered Al the Wop’s ceiling with the $17,000 they raised for the tens of thousands needed for the Locke park and memorials envisioned by Connie’s dream.
Secretary of State-emeritus March Fong Eu donated a print of her brushed painting of a horse which auctioned for $200. Occasional AsianWeek shutterbug Corky Lee donated a contemporary black-and-white photograph of himself holding a dated NYC Chinatown postcard in Chinatown –— going obscenely for $550 to Jonathan Leong.
TAKING NAMES: With the Sacramento County Housing and Redevelopment Agency transferring Locke land to current building owners by early next year, the Locke Management Association gets the “right of first refusal” if any current residents should sell. LMA would then offer listed pre-1953 Locke survivors and descendants an option to purchase property at fair market. The ’53 date was just after the state repealed the Alien Land Law, which locked out the once mostly Chinese and APA residents from owning Locke land. If you want to get on the list, contact the LMA at POB 1085 in Walnut Grove, CA 95690, e-mail Dr. Christina Fa at yellowvisions@gmail.com or call her at 916-812-2888. Locke — the country’s last surviving rural Chinese American town, a national landmark — risks becoming a ghost town short of its centennial in 2015 with its dwindling 80 or so residents, including about 15 Chinese Americans.
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GIRLIE MAN: Okay you politicos back from this week’s Boston Democratic National Convention. Locke crusader Dr. Fa, avid collector of Asian Pacific American pop culture, is pining for a Mattel’s APA delegate Barbie doll supposedly named “Kira” from the 2000 DNC in L.A. Mattel, Fa said, made them as a “concession to the APA community for not making an APA ‘Barbie for President’ doll.” Mattel had made only white, Latina and African American dolls. However, Fa isn’t counting on a gift from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘cause he’s neither Democrat nor girlie man. And please, no blond Barbies need apply to Dr. Fa …
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THAT’S THE TICKET: Okay we got the John-John presidential ticket for the Democrats going against incumbent Dick-Bush duo for the GOP. The Dems could have had Kerry-Kerrey if Vietnam War hero John had selected Vietnam War hero Bob, a Medal of Honor recipient and ex-Nebraska senator finishing a stint on the 9/11 commission. Do I hear an echo, echo?
In the Donkey’s Rear: AW correspondent/Kerry convention delegate Julie D. Soo reported that the battleground states (like Ohio and Pennsylvania) have a front row seat in Boston’s Fleet Center while her own California is in the rear of the convention center. But Soo got a make-up — she, along with fellow Golden Staters and overhung chad delegates of Florida’s Sunshine State, got free passes to see the musical The Lion King. She’s hanging out with ex-AW entertainment columnist and S.F. Supervisor Fiona “Buzz” Ma, a special convention guest and good Dem for raising at least $25K for the John-John ticket.
Samson Wong can be reached at (415) 321-5886, faxed at (415) 397-7258, e-mailed at swong@asianweek.com or potsticker@prodigy.net.