Their own playground

ACROSS from a row of car dealerships in the east San Gabriel Valley, the Dream dance club seems an unlikely node for a budding night life scene.

Just before 11 on a Friday night, the Dream’s parking lot is half-empty. Yet a few moments later, as if triggered by some hidden signal, baby Mercedeses and Lexuses, BMWs and tricked-out Hondas stream in, disgorging men with spiky hair and women in jeans, mid-calf boots and revealing tops. In a matter of 15 minutes, the lot is nearly full.

Inside, a bartender in a black jacket embroidered with dragons pours a drink into a funnel-shaped glass and lights it on fire. As his friends clap and chant in a mixture of English and Mandarin -- “Suck! Suck! Kuai! Kuai! [Fast! Fast!]” -- a man with a shaved head downs the flaming concoction through a straw and backs away triumphantly.

Some of the waitresses wear brightly colored cheongsams that barely cover their rear ends. Knots of twentysomethings gather around low-lying tables, where bottles of Grey Goose ($160 each) and Johnnie Walker ($150 for Black Label) are standard orders. “Are you ready to dance?” the DJ cries out in English.

Until a year and a half or so ago, this area along the 60 Freeway -- Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights, Industry -- was known primarily as a bedroom community for immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and as a second Chinese food capital behind much-celebrated Monterey Park and San Gabriel. The residents spent their off-hours helping the kids with homework, not imbibing at watering holes. But all that is beginning to change.

For the first time, the Los Angeles area has a concentration of stylish clubs and pubs where Mandarin is the principal language. Though it’s just in its infancy, it is drawing a good local crowd as well as out-of-town celebrities -- namely, Taiwanese actors and pop singers. But that doesn’t mean the scene is completely closed to non-Asian barhoppers: They’re more likely than not to find new friends here.

“Ten or 15 years ago, there was no place to go. At 9 p.m., you’d go home and watch TV,” says Karin Lee, a co-owner of Rowland Heights’ Kanpai House, where the beer comes in gold teapots and is poured into small glasses perfect for downing in one gulp. “Now it’s growing, more people are coming in, and there are more places to go at night.”

The question is not why places such as Dream and Kanpai are springing up, but what took so long.

Rowland Heights and Walnut are more than 50% Asian, Diamond Bar is 43% Asian and Hacienda Heights 36%, according to Census figures. Though there are sizable numbers of Koreans, Filipinos and Chinese from Hong Kong and mainland China, the dominant culture here is from Taiwan -- a place known for unabashedly relishing its after-hours activities.

Yet Taiwanese immigrants never tried to re-create that night life here, even as a thousand Chinese restaurants bloomed. By contrast, Koreatown, in the densely populated heart of urban L.A., developed on the eating and drinking fronts; its bars, lounges, dance clubs and 24-hour restaurants have long drawn partyers from all over the Southland.

In this area, “people live more suburban lives, and in Koreatown it’s more like a metropolitan life,” says Anton Cheng, a co-owner of the lounge DoZo in Industry. “I think in Koreatown a lot of people

But recently, new night life entrepreneurs such as Cheng have gravitated toward the area, with its wealthier, younger, more trend-savvy demographic. Here, no-frills karaoke bars are being transformed into lounges, and moribund sushi restaurants into late-night eating and drinking establishments. And it is here, not in Monterey Park, that you will find a restaurant such as Class 302, with the dining room cleverly rigged to resemble a schoolroom and meals served in the same metal lunchboxes used by generations of Taiwanese schoolchildren. It’s just one example of the many places where the decor is as much a part of the experience as the ingestibles.

“A lot of the money has gone farther east to the area around Rowland Heights, Walnut and West Covina,” says Carl Chu, the author of two guides to L.A.-area Chinese restaurants. “The restaurants there tend to be more upscale, and if not more upscale then more fashionable and more refined, than the ones that have remained in Monterey Park.”

Alex Ai opened his first pub, Indian, in Taipei in 1985, carefully calibrating each aspect of the interior to jibe with his idea of Native American kitsch. With it, Ai helped launch an island-wide trend toward hangouts whose every detail, from wall decorations to the waitresses’ outfits, is built on a theme.

Ai eventually sold his three Taipei theme pubs, opting for a quiet family life in the San Gabriel Valley. Now he is again at the forefront of a night life trend with his latest venture, Jurassic Restaurant, which opened about a year and a half ago in an Industry strip mall and is modeled on a Taipei pub that he once owned.

Without a doubt, the most striking element of Jurassic’s prehistoric jungle decor is the large Tyrannosaurus rex that rears up from the center of the main dining area. The waitresses wear safari outfits with short-shorts and paw prints playfully stamped on the blouses.

With fried oysters, stir-fried chitterlings and entrees such as the classic dish of “three cups chicken” stewed in soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil, Jurassic’s menu combines street food with Momma’s home cooking. Most beers are less than $10 for a pitcher and are served in tiny glasses suitable for the bottoms-up toasts that are central to the Taiwanese way of drinking.

Despite its unusual decor, Jurassic is still at heart a pub. Like the handful of others that have sprung up in the Rowland Heights area in the last few years, this is a place to eat and drink surrounded by a crowd not so different from the one you might encounter at the original Jurassic in Taipei.

“It’s kind of like Hooters, but Hooters serves American food and is for people who like sports,” Ai, 41, says. “Here, the waitresses’ outfits are not quite as revealing. They’re friendly, and they’re not bad-looking, either.”

IN the same Industry strip mall as the Dream nightclub -- whose sleek, sparkly interior was done by a Taiwanese designer who also worked on a famous Taipei hotspot -- is Opium Pub, where $25 gets you all-you-can-drink Budweisers, and quavery karaoke renditions of Chinese pop songs rule the sound system. Around the corner from Opium is DoZo, a glitzy lounge that, like Dream, opened in its current incarnation just over a year ago.

At Diamond Plaza, the area’s other after-hours focal point, a T-shirt and sneakers are as dressed up as you need to be, but the alcohol flows just as fiercely at the pub Kanpai House, which holds monthly drinking contests.

For the 1.5 generation -- people who came to Southern California as teenagers, still visit Taiwan and are most comfortable speaking a mishmash of Mandarin and English -- Dream, Kanpai and the other recent arrivals mean they no longer have to drive an hour to Hollywood or Koreatown to get a taste of a real nightclub. Kevin Shaw, a business and marketing student at Cal Poly Pomona who came to California 10 years ago when he was 12, chills on the plush red couches at DoZo an average of four times a week. On weekends, DoZo has a DJ. Thursday is lingerie night, with go-go dancers and a reduced cover charge for women willing to show up in slips or bra-and-panty sets. The rest of the week features karaoke. When asked why he is such a fixture here, Shaw responds, “I’m more of a FOB,” invoking the slang term for “fresh off the boat.”

And yet those in the scene envision a broader future.

“As these places become more and more of a habit and Americans are exposed to them, there will be a night life here,” says Jurassic’s Ai. “They’ll come with friends, get introduced to these places and see that Chinese people have their own version of night life too.”

weekend@latimes.com

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Straight outta Taiwan

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A sampling of late-night hangouts in the east San Gabriel Valley.

1. Jurassic Restaurant 15301 E. Gale Ave., Industry, (626) 336-5899, jurassicrestaurant.com

Wash down classic Taiwanese bar food with your beer as a Tyrannosaurus rex looms over you. The waitresses, in their short shorts, resemble Hooters girls.

2. The Dream 17355 E. Gale Ave., Unit A, Industry, (626) 810-6118, www.the-dreamlounge.com

The area’s only dance club draws a well-dressed Asian American crowd from locally and beyond.

3. DoZo Lounge 17369-71 E. Gale Ave., Industry, (626) 913-1238, www.dozolounge.com

The same crowd as the Dream but in a more low-key atmosphere.

4. Opium Pub 17365 E. Gale Ave., Industry, (626) 810-0660

Listen to off-key renditions of Chinese pop songs while downing $25 all-you-can-drink Budweiser at this old-school karaoke bar.

5. Kanpai House Diamond Plaza, 1390 S. Fullerton Road, No. 102, Industry, (626) 964-8882

The most convivial of the area’s Taiwanese pubs; you’re likely to make new friends here.

6. The Brochette Restaurant & Bar Diamond Plaza, 1380 S. Fullerton Road, No. 106, Industry, (626) 810-5570

Brochette doesn’t offer much in the way of interior decorating but does serve pub essentials -- beer, along with fried, salty morsels.

7. Ten Ren’s Tea Time Diamond Plaza, 1330 S. Fullerton Road, No. 102, Industry, (626) 581-7700

This late-night hangout for kids without fake IDs has snacks and entrees in addition to a long list of teas, with or without boba.

8. Life Plaza Diamond Plaza, 1370 Fullerton Road, Nos. 103-106, Industry, (626) 839-8811

Set inside a gigantic stationery store and open until 1 a.m. on weekends, the Life Plaza restaurant serves the Taiwanese equivalent of diner food.

9. Class 302 1015 S. Nogales St., No. 125, Rowland Heights, (626) 965-5809

The decor and food are meant to evoke schooldays in Taiwan: Antique schoolroom desks are used as tables, and meals are served in metal lunchboxes.

10. Yummy 18902 E. Gale Ave., Unit B, Rowland Heights, (626) 839-9319

Not as crowded as other pubs, so you can score a booth to snack from the extensive menu and sip flavored sakes. Plus, it’s next to a BBQ-oriented Kan Pai branch.

-- Cindy Chang