A Different Beat
Thousands of Vietnamese Americans are gathering this week in Little Saigon to celebrate Tet with champagne and sticky rice cakes, a flurry of dragon dances, red-and-gold banners and fireworks.
But when night falls and Tet events are ending, revelers are just getting started.
They head to the hottest nightspots--places in and around Little Saigon that sizzle throughout the year. Catch the scene in Westminster, Garden Grove, Anaheim and Huntington Beach as we take you on a tour of some of the most popular dance floors.
These Vietnamese American clubs are unlike any mainstream disco. They present a quirky mix of Top 40 tunes sung in Vietnamese and English, Euro techno dance tracks and traditional Vietnamese folk songs; it’s the culmination of a quarter-century of cross-cultural mingling with mainstream American pop culture.
The glitzy venues have large stages and dance floors. They spice up the mix with fashion shows, promotional events, theme nights or New Year’s specials.
The clubs draw young and old, and their owners take pride in presenting live entertainment. When the band takes a break, the deejay takes over, but the fun is nonstop--it’s a hoot to see crowds of Vietnamese Americans go wild over the Village People’s “YMCA” and Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” as if disco never died.
More so than in mainstream clubs, the people-watching is divine. Young hipsters who run in place and prefer rave-style music that spins at a peppy 130 beats per minute frequent hot spots such as Garden Grove’s CAN Asian Entertainment and Westminster’s Club MVP.
Then there are the more sophisticated patrons with stylized French ballroom footwork. They glide across the floor a la Fred and Ginger in upscale rooms such as the Ritz in Anaheim and Majestic Dancing in Huntington Beach.
On a recent Saturday night at CAN, with a techno remix of John Lennon’s “Imagine” playing, the liberation of Vietnam played out among young club hoppers.
“The younger Vietnamese generation that came here wanted to be more Americanized,” said Rebecca Asano, who operates CAN Asian Entertainment with her mother, Wendy, the club’s owner who goes by her stage name Le Uyen.
“They’ve had a taste of the American clubs and they want that here,” said Asano, 34, who keeps the entertainment fresh for the twenty- and thirtysomethings while her mother caters to an older crowd. “It’s a hipper crowd now. It’s a new generation going clubbing.”
Unlike her mother, who loves the Carpenters, the Beatles and Barbra Streisand, Asano jokes that she tracks the latest music trends by keeping up with Madonna.
Like the Material Girl, CAN has had different incarnations. The Asano family came to the United States in 1971 and opened Saigon Cabaret, which inspired the 1984 novel “Laguna Heat” by T. Jefferson Parker.
That club closed in 1989. In 1992 the Asanos launched CAN, with an outdoor smoking patio, a fire pit and two water fountains. The club name comes from a military explosive used in the Vietnam War but it has come to mean all that’s cool. It’s “the bomb,” Asano explains.
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Although the atmosphere at these nightclubs is friendly and most people speak English, mingling can be a bit tricky because many patrons are couples or close-knit groups.
But there’s an upside too. The clubs tend not to feel like meat markets. Take, for instance, a table of three women in cocktail dresses at CAN, sitting 10 feet from a trio of men dressed like Benneton models. They seemed oceans away and neither busted a move; the ladies quietly watched the live stage show and the dudes sipped Coronas.
On the other hand, many clubbers are serious dancers. So you might just be whisked onto the dance floor by a partner who is a professional dance instructor or a novice trying out fresh steps.
Richard Nguyen, a 34-year-old interior designer from Garden Grove who has no trouble keeping a beat, likes to go to CAN and the Ritz to dance.
He’s single. He wears carefully coordinated slacks and a cashmere sweater. And--ooh-la-la--he speaks fluent French.
“I like to go to the clubs where the crowd is fun, young and more relaxed, where you just be yourself,” Nguyen said as he boogied energetically from one song to the next.
He would do well to pace himself. These clubs don’t heat up until 11:30 p.m., when the denizens of the dark trickle in. Vu Hoang of Atlanta often visits relatives and friends in Orange County and makes MVP a regular stop for a full evening.
“It’s a fun place to eat, shoot pool and dance,” said Hoang, 23, who likes the all-in-one aspect of MVP, a.k.a. Many Vietnamese People. It opened in March 1998 as a restaurant, sports bar and entertainment venue.
“This is a place to schmooze, meet new people,” said Vincent Dinh, who manages the family-run business. “I wanted to introduce the Dave and Busters, National Sports Grill concept of adult entertainment to the Asian community as a place to go for fun on weekends, because there weren’t many places like this in Westminster.”
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MVP is also unique for its 10 yellow-felt pool tables in a room next to the dance floor where 1,000-watt speakers pulse, multicolored spotlights spin wildly, and crowds of college kids and young professionals writhe in delight to electronica music. The kitchen takes orders for egg rolls and buffalo wings until midnight. There’s also a large lounge area with big-screen monitor and an outdoor smoking area.
MVP’s strict dress code prohibits T-shirts, tennis shoes and jeans. The club also keeps a major security presence to deter gang activity, Dinh said.
“This crowd doesn’t mind spending money on drinks and food, especially the guys who like to buy drinks to impress the women,” said Sound Source Entertainment club promoter Friday Almero, 21, of Lake Forest. “There are a lot of singles looking for dates.”
Her husband, DJ Brian A, spins trance, electronica, hip-hop, booty, freestyle, house and Old School music on request at MVP on Saturdays.
“In Orange County, there’s a high demand to have clubs locally instead of having to drive to Los Angeles to go clubbing,” said the deejay, who helped promote Asian nights at the now-defunct Rhino Room in Huntington Beach.
Other club promoters in the area such as Viet Tran of Limelight Entertainment bring theme nights to popular spots that may not typically serve an Asian clientele.
“The clubs want Asian crowds because they have money and they like to flash it around; they’re not afraid to use it. Club owners like that,” said Tran, who has introduced Asian theme night on Fridays at the Shark Club in Costa Mesa. “We want to bring the American nightlife to Asian crowds.”
Although there is still a good mix of ages in these clubs, the crowd is getting younger and that has posed a challenge for places such as Majestic and the Ritz. Those nightspots tend to draw an older crowd and that generation isn’t attending en masse anymore, owners say. The younger, working professionals are making the scene and demanding more for their money.
The result is a cultural mishmash typical at Vietnamese American nightclubs. It’s not unusual to see older couples waltzing to a live performance of “Saving All My Love For You” or twist and bebop to Marc Anthony’s “In Need to Know.” The women wear glitzy evening gowns or traditional Vietnamese silk outfits (ao dais) while their male counterparts look sleek in button-down suits.
And the younger crowds, who grew up with American clubs, still enjoy cultural entertainment that brings them closer to their heritage, such as the “tour” music of Old Saigon that requires a man to lead a lady on a tour of dance rhythms such as cha-cha-cha, rumba or Boston fox trot.
In clubs such as Majestic and the Ritz, it’s likely you’ll run into versatile vocalists who glide between traditional and pop tunes with ease and can sing in Vietnamese, English and French. The Ritz’s special New Year’s bash Friday features three young performers, Tu Quyen, Johnny Dung and Minh Tuyet, who can sing anything from Tony Bennett to N’Sync.
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Little Saigon is a cross-cultural wonderland, a mix of Southeast Asia and Southern California. A population boom in the 1980s enabled the community to develop an impressive arts and entertainment industry. Now, more than 100,000 Vietnamese Americans live in the area, particularly in Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana.
Since the ‘80s several nightclubs have come and gone, including Dem Dong Phuong, the Palace, Diamond, Queenbee and Tu Do. The resilience of the Ritz and Majestic has made them seem like institutions.
“The demand for nightclubs was high at the time [when the club opened] because there weren’t many places to go for entertainment on weekends,” explains John Quoc Nguyen, who opened Majestic with his wife, singer Phi Khanh, in 1989.
To keep the ambience fresh and exciting even for the regulars, Nguyen said he’s constantly coming up with something new: changing the decor two to three times a year, adding new lighting, improving sound quality and rearranging the entertainment lineup.
On good nights, the club brings in crowds of 500. Half a dozen musicians perform exclusively for the nightclub.
“People who come here like to hear Vietnamese singers perform in Vietnamese to recall the memory of Vietnam that they heard 25 years ago,” Nguyen said.
Like most regulars, the music is what keeps Thuy Trang of Santa Ana coming back.
“I love dancing to all styles of music,” said Trang, 40, a dance instructor like her husband, Jimmy Tho. Both wearing leather pants, they tirelessly stepped, twirled and dipped together to singer Thai Thao’s energetic rendition of Cher’s “Believe.”
“We come here every weekend. The music is excellent, and so is the sound quality,” Tho, 45, said.
For those a tad more flat-footed when it comes to a pasodoble, samba or jive, Tho graciously extends an invitation to the couple’s studio: “Come to my class. Learn the new international style.”
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Lowell Meyer of Orange is putting the dance lessons he learned 2 1/2 years ago into practice.
“I go to the Vietnamese clubs all the time because there’s nonstop dancing,” Meyer, 58, said, arriving with a group of Vietnamese American friends. “I love dancing the ballroom styles.”
With Majestic’s ballroom dance instructors, the freestyling ravers who like to do the humpty dance, and its velour red-and-black cocktail lounge decor, “There’s no other club like it,” said former Los Angeles resident Zinny Pham, 52.
Pham, sporting blood-red fingernails and bold eyeliner that would make Cleopatra proud, wears a vintage gold sequined cap and jewelry--necklace, earrings and rings that sparkle like ice cubes in a martini.
She’d love to talk, but--no time--she jumps to her feet as the band plays Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” and dances off into the night.
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Where the Music and Motion Are
* CAN Asian Entertainment, 14241 Euclid Ave., Garden Grove. 21 and older. Thursday-Sunday, 7 p.m.-2 a.m. Cover $10. (714) 554-3001.
* Majestic Dancing, 18582 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach. 21 and over. Friday-Saturday, 8:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m. Cover $15. (714) 963-1089.
* Club MVP, 14160 Beach Blvd., Westminster. 21 and older. Cover $10. Friday-Saturday, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. (714) 903-7770.
* Ritz, 509 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. 21 and over. Cover $15 to $30 (New Year’s event on Friday. Cover charge: $30 to $35.) (714) 535-5999.