San Francisco's Chinatown reckons with Atlanta attacks: 'I don't feel safe anywhere'
The morning after the Atlanta spa shootings, a man struck an elderly Asian woman on San Francisco’s Market Street in a seemingly unprovoked attack. Over the past few months, the Asian American community in the San Francisco Bay Area has been inundated with reports of attacks like these – from robberies to burglaries to deadly assaults.
So when eight people, six of whom were Asian women, were killed after a shooter sought out three Asian-owned businesses in the Atlanta area, many in the Bay Area Asian American community were all too familiar with the pain and fear that followed.
“It’s so stupid,” Betty Louie, the adviser to the San Francisco Chinatown Merchants Association, said. “I’m ablebodied. I’m OK, I’m safe. But I’m afraid to go and do my afternoon walk. I don’t feel safe anywhere at this point.”
Police investigators have warned that it was too early to determine if the shooting was racially motivated. But for many, the shooting in Georgia was tragically unsurprising, the expected culmination of unchecked antiAsian hate throughout the country that is only now making its way into public awareness. “We knew it was only going to get worse and it was only a matter of time before something like this happened,” said Max Leung, a local community organizer.
The shooting took place the same day that Stop AAPI Hate, a not-forprofit coalition, released a report documenting nearly 3,800 anti-Asian incidents of hate during the pandemic, a number that experts believe to be just a fraction of the true total. California, the state with the biggest Asian population, had the largest percentage of reported incidents, with 1,691.
In the Bay Area, an 84-year-old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was killed in a seemingly unprovoked attack in San Francisco at the end of January. Several Asian elders were assaulted in Oakland’s Chinatown in February. And last week, a 75-year-old man from Hong Kong died in Oakland after being robbed and assaulted by a man police said had a history of victimizing elderly Asian people.
San Francisco police on Wednesday said they had arrested three men
suspected of assaulting a 67-year-old man inside a Chinatown laundromat last month. The city’s police department said it would be increasing patrols in Asian neighborhoods.
In San Francisco’s Chinatown, where foot traffic is slowly beginning to return after a year of shelter-inplace and pandemic-related economic downturn, the local merchants have a WeChat channel where they warn each other of perceived dangers and imminent robberies and assaults.
To Jennifer, a Chinatown shop owner who asked not to disclose her last name out of fear for her safety, that was really all they could do to keep each other safe. Her own shop has been burgled several times in snatch-and-grab attacks: a group of kids would enter and overwhelm her and then run out with items before she could stop them. When she’d call the police, there were never any repercussions.
“I got so scared,” she said. “I feel hopeless. Even when you call the cops, it doesn’t work out. How do you feel? Nobody can help you. I’m trying to go get a gun license. I need something here. I don’t know what I will do.”
For many in the community, the frustrating part is that crimes like these burglaries aren’t being defined as hate crimes, even though the community has seen the same individuals returning to Chinatown to rob the same stores, ultimately targeting a certain population. In Oakland, prosecutors recently charged a man in connection with the killing of a 75-year-old man from Hong Kong who police said “has a history of victimizing elderly Asian people”. “They know Chinese people, they know on Stockton Street, the old senior citizens, they know they can’t fight back,” Jennifer said.
“Right now, I’ve started to realize this: nothing is fair,” Jennifer said. “You just have to defend yourself. All Chinese people, they just have to get together and do something.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, Leung started the SF Peace Collective to patrol Chinatown and protect the older people and women who were getting attacked. Though many talk about the hate in terms of the pandemic and the anti-Asian rhetoric of “kung flu” and “China virus”, Leung said the violence had begun well before March 2020.
After the shooting, he just numb, he said.
“I don’t have any tears left to cry any more,” Leung said. “I’m just crying on the inside now. One of my friends said it best yesterday: she said she feels alone. Even at these Asian solidarity rallies and marches, it’s just us. The community feels so alone and so vulnerable.”
Leung is sick of the mental gymnastics people go through to not acknowledge when Asians experience hate. “The fact that he claimed to have a sex addiction, and yet targeted only Asian sex workers, tells me he fetishized Asian women,” Leung said of the Atlanta shooting. “All of that is racist.”
A few weeks ago, Leung had a gun pulled on him while he was patrolling Chinatown. He’s getting death threats. He’s afraid to leave his house, but he felt knows he has to, so when he does, he does it with heightened anxiety.
“I’m just tired,” Leung said. “I’m tired of having to prove that we face discrimination. I’m tired of having to prove that we belong. I’m tired of having to prove that we’re allies. I’m tired of having to apologize for speaking up. I’m tired of being gaslighted. I’m tired of the victimblaming, of the oppression Olympics. I’m tired of thinking of others while nobody else is thinking about us. I’m tired of having to have to internalize the pain. I’m just so tired.”
Rose Ewens, author of Fangirls, a study of contemporary fandom.
Social media is built for individual self-expression. Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitter – and even the portrait orientation of a smartphone screen – give an advantage to single voices and faces while making group celebrity less legible. Even within indie-rock, the most bandfriendly genre apart from metal, the cult of the individual is stronger than ever, which has the advantage of enabling more women to rise to the fore. “Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, Waxahatchee and other solo rock acts are essentially leading the genre now,” says Ewens. “Phoebe Bridgers, who is extremely online and very savvy about using Instagram and Twitter in a way that Gen Z finds relatable and funny, has attracted pop levels of idolatry.”
Perhaps, too, there is less of an appetite for the interpersonal drama of a group. In the time before reality shows, bands offered insights into group dynamics (if we’re being highfalutin) or voyeuristic entertainment (if we’re not). Even now, new generations of fans enjoy finding out exactly what Paul or John said in 1969, or which messy divorce inspired which
Fleetwood Mac song, or how Noel and Liam came to hate each other’s guts. On one level, every band is a psychological experiment in which disparate personalities are crammed into close proximity and thrust into the spotlight. You don’t need bands for that experience now that it is the cornerstone format of reality television. The great tea-spilling, click-attracting feuds in modern pop are between solo artists, not within bands.
In Asia, though, it’s an entirely different story. “Idol” groups, painstakingly assembled, trained, styled and choreographed for maximum appeal, have been at the forefront of Japanese and Korean pop for decades. KPop stars BTS are the world’s biggest pop group. “Strategically, this system has more to offer to the fans than a solo artist,” says Shin Cho, head of K-Pop and J-Pop at Warner Music Asia. “Individual fans have their own favourite members but also appreciate the chemistry in a group. There can also be sub-group projects that offer something different. The group format is viewed as more dynamic because there is simply more to do and show compared to a solo artist.”
Sonny Takhar, former global president of Simon Cowell’s Syco Music, who worked with One Direction, Little Mix and Fifth Harmony, hopes that this is still possible in the UK and US, too, albeit in a less regimented way. Now CEO and founder of KYN Entertainment, he recently launched a new five-woman group, Boys World, who have racked up more than 30m likes on TikTok. “It’s always been much more expensive than launching a solo artist,” he says. “However, you need to exercise more patience in today’s market. Gen Z has many choices and demands on their time compared with those of a teenager five years ago. There’s a constant fight to gain their attention. Pop groups need to be very relatable. Every fan should recognise an element of themselves in the girls’ personalities and lives.”
Takhar assembled Boys World through a more organic process than the old Syco model, giving existing members a role in recruiting new ones. “The girls were very much at the centre of each decision to ensure that they formed a gang of friends first and foremost. They have grown up on social media and are very comfortable using it on their own terms. It’s far better than a formatted TV show. They are in control. The age of the svengali is over.”
The challenge posed by all pop cultural trends is to work out whether or not it is a permanent structural shift or just another phase. The right group at the right time, whether it is the Strokes or the Spice Girls, can change everything. In the short term, the pandemic has made it impossible for new bands to form and threatens the survival of the regional venue circuit on which they depend, while Brexit has thrown up expensive new obstacles for touring bands. Yet Oborne remains optimistic.
“I’m excited about the wave of creativity that’s going to follow this period that we’ve just lived through,” he says. “I feel this hankering in youth culture for real experience and connection. I’m still quite the romantic when it comes to music. Look at Fontaines DC. I see a picture of them and wish I was in a band. It’s the same thing as walking down the street with your friends and feeling like you’re part of something. Anything’s possible.”
Regardless of trends in music technology, streaming and celebrity culture, there is still a lot to be said for being able to share the pleasures and pressures of life in the music industry with a group of peers. Having released four solo albums as well as seven with Maxïmo Park, Paul Smith is well-placed to compare the two scenarios.
“I can get things done a lot quicker as a solo artist,” he says. “I can choose the artwork, decide the tracklisting: little things that take us weeks because we have an egalitarian mindset. You can make a bit more money. But I love the communal aspect of being in a band. You’re sharing everything: sharing the profits but also sharing the load. If you’re a big solo star and you’re not enjoying it, it must be one of the loneliest places you can be.”
“We’re fanatical about bands and being in a band,” says Wolf Alice’s Joff Oddie. “A good band creates a community. They have an ecosystem that, as a fan, you feel like you want to be part of. Despite all that’s been said about individualism, there is still a hunger for that collective feeling.” Perhaps you just have to squeeze it all into a phone screen.
Starting a band is expensive – it would be a disaster if it’s only open to middleclass kids
Joff Oddie, Wolf Alice