Lêe from Hop Sing Laundromat just let us know he posted a letter on the Chinatown bar’s web site. We don’t think it’s a Dear John letter to the city of Philadelphia, but at this point, who knows. Here’s a piece of it.
The amount of coverage came as a surprise to us, but that is what the press does to new events, items and places of interest as late American author David Foster Wallace once wrote, “it did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase,” except we did not intend to advertise our establishment. After al, this is a just a simple bar …
Really though, you’ve got to check out the whole thing for yourself at Hop Sing’s web site.
So yes, it really happened. Around 8 o’clock last night, Lêe opened the gate that guards the door that leads to the lobby that opens onto the dining room at Hop Sing Laundromat and started allowing actual human beings (as opposed to cajoling members of the press, though there were a fair number of us in the crowd as well) into the bar.
It was gorgeous. It was bigger than it had ever seemed before (an effect of all the detritus of a long construction being removed, no doubt). It was lit with a hundred candles, the flames reflecting off of antique mirrors and lovingly polished and reconstructed fixtures and filled with the sounds of muted voices and music. The tables filled slowly as Lêe paced the entries–two and three and four of his friends, enemies and stalkers being let in at a time–but by the time he was done, the room was buzzing with conversation and quiet music.
I got Lêe from Hop Sing on the blower yesterday afternoon and he was pissed–furious about a million different things and, by his own admission, well into his second day without sleep.
He was in a rush, after all, because he has this pre-opening, media-slash-friends-and-family party happening (tonight, as a matter of fact) and he’d been scrambling to get everything ready for it. There’d been time (hours and hours and hours…) spent dealing with the PLCB, more time spent on interviews, more time spent polishing and dusting and getting every little thing in place. The man is, as I’ve said before, a perfectionist. And the drag of perfectionism is that nothing is ever quite perfect enough.
But now, he was getting down to the wire. And the strain was showing.
“That’s it,” he said, barking into his phone. “I’m not opening. You tell everyone, ‘Lee got the fucking bar all finished and then he decided not to open’.”
No, there’s no hard opening date yet. But Hop Sing Laundromat is getting close enough that its enigmatic owner Lêe let us (and our cameras) in for a quick peek at the seriously-really-almost-very-nearly-finished dining room. There’s not a lot of shots of the bar here–mostly because Lêe has spent the last few days bringing in his liquor and that side of the room is still kind of a mess. But it is also beautiful, with some custom touches that will just blow your mind.
In this month’s issue of the Atlantic, Bonnie Tsui asks whether the rise of China spells the end of Chinatowns. According to 2010 Census data, Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco have recently begun depopulating. Whether this is mainly due to decreasing immigration from China, or high rents pushing working-class Asians out of the city and into the “ethnoburbs,” the trend seems significant. In the last 10 years, Manhattan’s Chinatown lost 9 percent of its residents—including 14 percent of its Asian ones.
What this means for food in Chinatowns is an open question, and the answers may prove to be counterintuitive. Since there’s no reason not to, consider Philadelphia as a bellwether.
Bonanza's Hop Sing finally gets his laundromat (kinda)
For all of you who have been waiting (and waiting…) for the opening of Hop Sing Laundromat at 1029 Race Street, I have a tiny bit of good news. I talked to Lêe this morning, and he let me know a couple of things:
Thing 1: The inspections are proceeding smoothly so far, removing one of the last official roadblocks to an opening.
Thing 2: Hop Sing Laundromat now has a Twitter account, @hopsinglaundry. According to Lee, this is where everyone can go for updates and news regarding the Chinatown bar and lounge. As of right now, the feed has two followers (one of them is me) and precisely zero tweets, but I’m at least reasonably sure that it won’t stay that way forever.
The most fun we had this week (in the office, anyway) was playing Caption This Photo. The best response we got (of many, many good ones), came from DS Nyce who came through with “I will have the Gary Larson special…” For those of you who don’t get the joke, dig this.
I know, I know… There are some days when it seems like making predictions about the opening of the long-awaited, much-speculated Hop Sing Laundromat are all we Philly food writers do. And yet the place itself remains resolutely…unopened.
But that elusive opening night might’ve actually drawn just a little bit closer today with the launch (kinda) of the official Hop Sing website–or of the official Hop Sing website’s splash page, at least. I’ve been told that the menu and some other pertinent details will be going up “in the coming weeks” which, once again, will give us all some new parameters for guessing when the big night might finally be.
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