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The Legendary Asia SF · Asian Adjacent

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of Asian Adjacent. I am
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: James Lodd Junior. It's Pride Month that I want to
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: give a shout out to a San Francisco legendary.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: God I call legendary spot.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: It's longer there, it's gone, but I want to give
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a spotlight to it.
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  Speaker 2: It was called Asia SF.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Asia SF was a restaurant and a nightclub in South
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of Market in San Francisco. It was for twenty five years,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: opening nineteen ninety eight, closed to twenty twenty four. I
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: was there in the nineties and two thousands. I went
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: there many times. It was a dinner cabaret space. It
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: featured an employed transgender women as performer, service and entertainers.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It was a major I mean it was so it
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: was so upscale that straight people went there all the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: time too. It was like it was and the women,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: you I mean they were women. I mean you say
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  Speaker 1: transmitted women.
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  Speaker 2: There are women.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: You look at them, you I mean it's they're women.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And they would serve the food, take your orders, perform
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  Speaker 1: between saw between sets. It was such The food was delicious,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: That's the thing. The food was so good. And the
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  Speaker 1: dinner there was dinner the dinner. It was so good.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: The entertainment was amazing. It was fancy.
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  Speaker 2: You dressed up to go there.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: And I just I'm sad that it closed, especially now
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: with the advent of.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Trans and dragon all this stuff now, and it was
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: that's a great place.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean by when people understand the popularity,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the worldwide popularity of this place in the two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and twenty tens, it was a place to go to.
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  Speaker 1: It's it's a landmark. That building in the corner. Everything
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  Speaker 1: is like, it's like a landmark. People would you would
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: come to town and one of the things you would
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: do is go to agsfe of the one of the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: nights you were in town. You know, it's funny because
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: there was I call it places well, I mean, there
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: was no there was no other place for trans And
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: it's funny. I was there when it was when people
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: were first called m t F for F to M.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I worked in sex education at the time and sexual health,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: where I worked with the SFAIDS Foundation and other organizations.
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  Speaker 1: And and I had the first some of the first
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: classes on what f to ms were and m to
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  Speaker 1: f's were, and the whole of terminology and and and
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  Speaker 1: teaching acceptance and what this is all mean, and not
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: hiring training. I hired trans people that saw my jobs
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: on the board of a couple of things. It was
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  Speaker 1: such you know, there was a It was a great
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  Speaker 1: time back then, in the turn of the century, like
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I was saying, nineteen nineteen, late nineteen ninety, early two thousands,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and to have a space like HFSF was very unique
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: because there were no other spaces there was Asian and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: like that in San Francisco essentially has a large Asian population,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: but it was just so accepted as a location for
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: a date night or dinner. Find it just it. I'm
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: gonna give it all its props. Let's never forget never,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: never forget Asian sf UH in San Francisco. Like I said,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it closed the twenty twenty fours for a couple of years,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: but I will never forget it.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: This is Asian adjacent. I'm James lot Junior Top teen.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Next time,