In the late 1970s, Chinatown restaurants started booking some unlikely dinner entertainment: the rowdy young bands of the nascent West Coast punk scene.
Words by Madeline Leung Coleman
China Wagon Sacramento, California
The Hong Kong Café Los Angeles, California
Madame Wong’s Los Angeles, California
Mabuhay Gardens San Francisco, California
Kin’s Coloma Sacramento, California
Dianne Chai, bassist of the band the Alley Cats, at the Hong Kong Café, 1979. Photograph by Louis Jacinto.
Outside the Mab, at 443 Broadway in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, late 1970s–early ‘80s. Photograph by Bobby Castro.