February House Party: Hayyyy - Lunar New Year Party

Ernesto said that 321 would make a very good anthropological study.  Such a subculture... the mysterious gay asian... what do they do?  what do they talk about?  what is important to them?  What is 321?  Lol... It's a gaysian frat house that throws parties, but as predicted we've slowed down as we've started to (kinda) grow up.

Our last house party was "What do Gay Horses Eat?  HAAAAAYYY"... a lunar new year party.  Year of the Horse celebration.  This happened back in February and the decorations are still up!?  I usually would schedule this post closer to when it happened, but thought it would be nice to relive it since it's been so long.  Also my hair looks great... you look great.  I did write about preparing and the trauma I experienced hunting for decorations.

I was excited to get everyone drunk off of Fireball shots and play Rage Cage, but I was more excited to introduce a gambling game to everyone.

There was no photobooth this time, but people actually brought coins to play Bầu Cua Cá Cọp.  I was so happy to share something cultural to our usual drunken house party festivities.  I was super hyper - I was yelling and encouraging everyone to bet their laundry money.  People seemed to enjoy it.  It was something different.

Group pictures in the living room

Chilling in my bedroom

Balcony and Hallway

These pictures were selected and edited by Jimmy for Facebook to share.  As I go through them.. it really does look like a worthwhile cultural study.  What is this community of friends... what do they all have in common?  Why do they seem to be having so much fun?

So much happiness

The night ended at 2AM somewhere in the 626....places are still open?!! .... fascinating.

Supporting Ernesto

Ern texted me after I attended his fundraiser show to say thank you for always supporting his dance through out the years.  Well of course.  When your friends have talent, you support them.  And what Ern does is pretty admirable.  The fundraiser was to help his Philippine Folk Art dance group Kayamanan get to France so that they could perform at the Festival International de Folklore de Chateau-Gombert ....  We got to sample the show and it was pretty epic.  I was able to snag some shots sitting on the ground near the front.

 

Ern bares it all.  He nailed the facial expressions

I don't know much about Filipino Folk Dance, but as you can see there's Spanish influence, tons of styles and lots of movement.

We're supporters!  

When the show was over, the DJ took over and Jlo and myself did our own Folk Dance called the Cupid Shuffle.  Life is complete.

DTLA - Walking Around

 On a random weeknight, the boys took me out in DTLA.  I was able to knock out of a couple of to-dos which always makes me happy.

We started the night at Honeycut which is this small lounge / dance venue down an alley near LA Live.  There's always a line, but we were early enough.  I was actually surprised at how small the venue was, but we had a good time dancing away to random music and drinking artist-anal drinks.

This is the type of place that I would love to gay guerrilla bar.  Lots of straight energy that needs some jolting.

What I love about J.lo is that he loves to dance to any beat.  Latin beats are his favorite and I dance along while our bae sit and watch us awkwardly.  The light up dance floor at Honeycut makes for fun pictures.  Shake shake shake those hips.

Ghostly Andrew

 The night was a bit of a mixed bag.  There was an impossible line at the Standard hotel rooftop bar so we took a rest stop at Library bar.  We stopped by The Falls which spelled like BO.  We quickly left and discovered Peking Tavern hidden away on Spring Street.  You wouldn't know to go downstairs unless you saw their sandwich sign.  And bam... a glorious light night bar and restaurant.

Why Yes McKenzie, they have authentic Chinese food in DTLA at 1AM in the morning for a few bucks more than it should be, but that's okay considering the location!  A gastropub nonetheless.  You can read about it all here.

J.lo was a little buzzed and went up to flirt with the bartender to guess his age and ethnicity.  Chuckle chuckle.

Oh and next door to Peking Tavern is Crane's bar which is a dive bar except it has this crazy bank front entrance.  #hiddenLA I love it.

Arts District and Little Tokyo

Every Umami burger location has their specialty.  The "Arts District" burger has a slab of pork belly with their manly burger which I found difficult to eat and not worth the price.  But I managed to get something unique by getting order the Hatch Burger - Poutine style.

This was perfect since I was watching my weight and didn't want to eat the empty calories that came with the bun.  Poutine style: cheese gravy and bed of thin fries.  It was pretty perfect and not regrettable at all!  The Umami Burger in the Arts District has little to no wait and a hidden backyard.

We stayed inside.  Andrew was caught enjoying his fry here.
The restaurant gave us chips at the end of the night to place into jars based on how much we enjoyed our meal.  We could be as honest as we wanted however... they were watching us place the chips into the jars.  How awkward.  Thankfully we had a great time so we didn't have to lie when we all placed the chip into the positive jar.  We noticed that the staff was really bro-y.  But that's cute.

The Arts District section next to Little Tokyo has a ... meat packing feel.  If you must compare it to New York.. there is grit, art, factories and tons of development.

Lots of "boutiques" popping up everywhere.

The Santa Fe One project is massive.  It's going to bring in a new population to this area which can either destroy or patronize it's charm.  It's an interesting view from 1st street.  You can see the roof of this giant building that looks to extend for miles.

While the class arcade closes down in the Little Tokyo mall.  82 barcade is the new hotspot featuring mixology drinks for $14 and arcade games.  I thought it was cool how they projected Street fighter on the walls above the bar.  Other people can see how much you suck if you're able to sneak a game in.

Jimmy was doing well at this pinball machine until i distracted him with my camera.  Sorry babe.

Back in Little Tokyo Plaza I noticed how late this gift store stayed open and how much work it was to bring in and out all of the merchandise every day.  I hope this place stays around for a while.

Happy Birthday Martin.  We were able to gather at Wolf and Crane which I love.  The energy is young and Asian American.  Drinks are good.  People are hip.

I had this venue as a possible spot for my birthday, but ruled it out when I started planning with James.  But I'm glad that I was able to celebrate something here and checked it off my list.

Twas a nice warm evening.

Finding Inspiration from Bruce

I have a slight headache because I just browsed through 5 years of blog content.  I was introduced to Bruce's blog http://jiachi.tumblr.com/ and could not close the window until I finished.  Took me about half day.

I have not met him, but I enjoyed his stories about bike rides, camping trips, urban adventures and supper socials - Many things that I would love to emulate.

Below are some of my favorites:

Family Trip to Arizona and New Mexico
Decorating His Studio using Found Furniture
Walking Through a Tunnel Between Ktown and Culver City
Exploring Temecula
Camping at Buckhorn
Taking a Big Group to Catalina Island
Hot Springs in Bakersfield
Facilitating Community with a Neighborhood Block Party

His has found a community of do-ers.  People who love local adventure, who get married in random places, who work on various creative projects.  There's a lot of substance here - art, city appreciation, sustainability efforts, community building.  All of it is very admirable.

He has an email newsletter that lists events for the week.  I might just crash a couple before he moves to the East Coast and ask him to fix my bike.

There are a lot of blogs out there about backpackers, explorers, dare devils, but Bruce resonates with me because he's a Silverlake/Echo Park Gaysian blogging about his adventures.  Basically, he's the type of person that I want to be, doing things that I want to do... except bike everywhere and eat donuts (both activities are dangerous to me).

Time to clean up my blog - I've already started with better pictures.  Now to fill it with amazing adventures and activities!

Alright 2014 - let's try this again.  Let's look up to people instead of being bored and complacent and complaining about it TWICE on my blog.


LET'S DO THIS!

Visiting Whittier

Alysia lives in Whittier which is on the wrong side of a triangle of highways to LA.  Basically, it's really inconvenient to get there so she rewarded us by giving us frozen homemade soup and a new mattress pad.  How nice!

She lives in a country time back house with neighbors that play reggae non-stop at a ridiculous volume.  She's excited to move out.  I'm excited for her to live closer to me.

We took a stroll around the quite college town and noticed this odd tree.  Not sure why it's doing that.

Alysia brought Jimmy and me to Bizarra Capital which is owned by the same person who does Guisados.  Who thought Whittier would be it's home.

Amazing amazing place.  Everything was delicious and unique.  I gave it 5 stars on Yelp!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/bizarra-capital-whittier?hrid=mhMYDMHQxqm4as0fmhiHJw

We took an evening stroll burn the calories.

What a lovely evening.

Night Time in Silverlake

The windy streets of Silvelake were really pretty.  It took me a while to find parking and so I was a little late to watching "The Moth."  This open mic like story telling event had a difficult topic:  neighborhood.  But people reduced their stories to things about neighbors.  Out of the 10, there were only 3 good ones.  Los Globos was also a steamy venue which made it difficult to breathe.  It was torture for many.

The MC was entertaining and clever.  "... that's just like Los Angeles - it's a good brand, but bad product."  This refers to how the city attracts hundreds of people, but it's not easy to live here and people eventually leave.  However, if you figure it out, Los Angeles is an amazing place.